"... as all history informs us, there has been in every State & Kingdom a constant kind of warfare between the governing & governed: the one striving to obtain more for its support, and the other to pay less. And this has alone occasioned great convulsions, actual civil wars, ending either in dethroning of the Princes, or enslaving of the people. Generally indeed the ruling power carries its point, the revenues of princes constantly increasing, and we see that they are never satisfied, but always in want of more. The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes; the greater need the prince has of money to distribute among his partisans and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance, and enable him to plunder at pleasure. There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh, get first all the peoples money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants for ever ..." -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) US Founding Father Source: before the Constitutional Convention, June 2, 1787.
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Benjamin.Franklin.Quote.EF61
"There never did, there never will, and there never can exist a parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the `end of time,’ or of commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it. ... Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it." -- Thomas Paine (1737-1809) US Founding father, pamphleteer, author
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Paine.Quote.1F53
"No man has ever ruled other men for their own good." -- George Herron (1862-1925) American clergyman, lecturer, writer, and Christian socialist activist
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/George.Herron.Quote.22CE
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