Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.

"Arbitrary power [tyranny, dictatorship] is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness [lawlessness, anarchy]." — George Washington

People are more difficult to work with than machines. And when you break a person, he can't be fixed.

To use raw power is to make yourself infinitely vulnerable to greater powers.

There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily, and so do dreams and hearts.

And yet I am troubled; it would take so little to make the record stop: a broken spring, the whim of Cousin Adolphe. How strange it is, how moving, that this hardness should be so fragile. Nothing can interrupt it yet all can break it.

power that isn’t really justified by the will of the governed should be dismantled.

Great Light, the Enemy's power is so fragile! The devils can use only what we ourselves will give them. Do you see? Give them nothing and their power fails; it falls like a spent arrow, like a blade broken and blunted.

When contemplated in its extreme, almost any power looks dangerous.

Nothing can interrupt it yet all can break it.

power has an important limitation. It has to be seen as legitimate, or else its use has the opposite of its intended effect.

You cannot ask things to do what they are not meant to do. Eventually, they will break.

Some things are within our power while others are not.

Rules are mostly made to be broken and are too often for the lazy to hide behind