“While levels of freedom have receded even in some of the most entrenched parliamentary democracies. Eternal vigilance, as the saying goes, is the price of liberty, as power can easily be stolen.
Vigilance, however, is not the same as gloom. Even a modicum of historical perspective indicates that today dictatorship is on the decline when compared to the twentieth century.”
Frank Dikötter
“A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.”
Will Durant