Frank Knight: “The probability of the people in power being individuals who would dislike the possession and exercise of power is on a level with the probability that an extremely tender-hearted person would get the job of whipping-master in a slave plantation.”
(Cited by F.A. Hayek in The Road to Serfdom (1944) [1994], p. 167. Hat tip to Chris Matthew Sciabarra for bringing this fantastic quote to my attention via his spectacular Total Freedom: Toward A Dialectical Libertarianism, p. 265.)