This quotation from John Locke appears on the U.S. Department of Justice.
Here are a few more words that speak to our present moment:
“History will teach us that … those men who have overturned the liberties of republics the greatest number have begun their career, by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing Demagogues and ending Tyrants.”
— Alexander Hamilton, Federalist no. 1 (1787)
“The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
— Frederick Douglass, speech at Canandaigua, New York (1857)
“What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. … And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.”
— Hannah Arendt, 1974 interview, published in New York Review of Books (1978)