Since we're doing quotes:

"The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize
they can bribe the people with their own money."

- Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)

"This year (1935) will go down in history! For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration!
Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!"

- Adolf Hitler


“When the people find that they can vote themselves money,
that will herald the end of the republic.”

- Benjamin Franklin


“A democracy is always temporary in nature;
it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.
A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidateswho promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship”

- Alexander Tytler 1787

"You need only reflect that one of the best ways
to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days
is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding
fathers used in the great struggle for independence."

- Charles Austin Beard (1874-1948)

"Only an armed people can be truly free.
Only an unarmed people can ever be enslaved."

- Aristotle

I prefer wood to plastic, leather to nylon, waxed cotton to Gore-Tex, and split bamboo to graphite.