“The prevailin' weakness of most public men is to Slop over. G. Washington never slopt over.”

Decline and Fall (1928)

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book VI, Chapter I, Sec. 4

As quoted in “For Utopia, Curb State Controls”, Peggy Baker, Ames Daily Tribune (Ames, Iowa), January 23, 1970

Reported in: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Agriculture (1973) Hearings Before the Committee on Agriculture, House of Representatives, Ninety-second Congress. p. 21
Attributed

America's Drug Forum interview (1991)
Context: The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill said in the middle of the 19th century in On Liberty. The proper role of government is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Government, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual's own good.
The case for is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from overeating. We all know that overeating causes more deaths than drugs do. If it's in principle OK for the government to say you must not consume drugs because they'll do you harm, why isn't it all right to say you must not eat too much because you'll do harm? Why isn't it all right to say you must not try to go in for skydiving because you're likely to die? Why isn't it all right to say, "Oh, skiing, that's no good, that's a very dangerous sport, you'll hurt yourself"? Where do you draw the line?

Source: Rise of the Evening Star

Explaining why he never tried to lose weight. <br class="br"> Toledo Blade, Aug 20, 1978 http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&amp;dat=19780820&amp;id=UDBPAAAAIBAJ&amp;sjid=fgIEAAAAIBAJ&amp;pg=6371,746427

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Water Book