"The major problem- one of the major problems, for there are several- one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of whom manages to get people to let them do it to them.

To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.

To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

""But that would be putting the clock back," gasped the Governor. "Have you no idea of progress, of development?"
"I have seen them both in an egg," said Caspian. "We call it Going bad in Narnia.["]"
— C. S. Lewis

"'Those were happier days, when there was still close friendship at times between folk of different race, even between Dwarves and Elves.'
'It was not the fault of the Dwarves that the friendship waned,' said Gimli.
'I have not heard that it was the fault of the Elves,' said Legolas.
'I have heard both,' said Gandalf[.]"
— J. R. R. Tolkien

"The central assertion of this book is that the world of humankind constitutes a manifold, a totality of interconnected processes, and inquiries that disassemble this totality into bits and then fail to reassemble it falsify reality. Concepts like “nation,” “society,” and “culture” name bits and threaten to turn names into things. Only by understanding these names as bundles of relationships, and by placing them back into the field from which they were abstracted, can we hope to avoid misleading inferences and increase our share of understanding."
— Eric R. Wolf

"We don't know who discovered water, but we know it wasn't the fish."
— Marshall McLuhan