Great quote...

...I was introduced to over at Sipsey Street Irregulars, which is a blog I've been following for the last several months:

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

Whichever Mencken book this is in, I must have missed it but I'll leave the attribution in without bothering to fact-check it for you.