“For those who practise tyranny and deprive others of their rights, I will be harsh and stern, but for those who follow the law, I will be most soft and tender.”

Confusion of Feelings or Confusion: The Private Papers of Privy Councillor R. Von D (1927)

As quoted in Champlain's Dream‎ (2008) by David Hackett Fischer

Majority opinion in Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1 (1964)

Source: De Profundis

Nobel Peace Prize Lecture (December 10, 2014)

Change the World Without Taking Power (2002)

Address to the Democratic National Convention http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/huberthumphey1948dnc.html (July 14, 1948), Convention Hall, Philadelphia.

Acceptance Speech http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/may98/goldwaterspeech.htm as the Republican Presidential candidate, San Francisco (July 1964)
Unsourced variant: Now those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth, and let me remind you they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyranny.
Context: Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.