“Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside”

The Story of Kin Wen and the Miraculous Tusk
Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat (1928)

Introduction
The allusion to the "tigers of wrath" and "horses of instruction" is from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: Proverbs of Hell
The Portable Matthew Arnold (Viking Press, 1949)
Context: Disgust is expressed by violence, and it is to be noted of our intellectual temper that violence is a quality which is felt to have a peculiarly intellectual sanction. Our preference, even as articulated by those who are most mild in their persons, is increasingly for the absolute and extreme, of which we feel violence to be the true sign. The gentlest of us will know that the tigers of wrath are to be preferred to the horses of instruction and will consider it intellectual cowardice to take into account what happens to those who ride tigers.

"Armistice - or Peace?", published in The Evening Standard (11 November 1937).
The 1930s

Source: The Storyteller

Source: Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 1 (p. 12)

1963, Address at the Free University of Berlin
Context: As I said this morning, I am not impressed by the opportunities open to popular fronts throughout the world. I do not believe that any democrat can successfully ride that tiger. But I do believe in the necessity of great powers working together to preserve the human race, or otherwise we can be destroyed.

"Commuter," The Lady Is Cold (1929)

As quoted in Cnaan Liphshiz. Obama ‘chickened out’ of confronting mullahs http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=272989. The Jerusalem Post. July 6, 2012. <br class="br">Interviews, 2012

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star