“No greater mistake can be made than to think that our institutions are fixed or may not be changed for the worse. […] Increasing prosperity tends to breed indifference and to corrupt moral soundness. Glaring inequalities in condition create discontent and strain the democratic relation. The vicious are the willing, and the ignorant are unconscious instruments of political artifice. Selfishness and demagoguery take advantage of liberty. The selfish hand constantly seeks to control government, and every increase of governmental power, even to meet just needs, furnishes opportunity for abuse and stimulates the effort to bend it to improper uses... The peril of this Nation is not in any foreign foe! We, the people, are its power, its peril, and its hope!”
Conditions of Progress in Democratic Government (1909), by Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) American politician and academic, Governor of New York, Judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice, Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, and US Secretary of State.
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