Place on one side fifty thousand armed men, and on the other the same number: let them join in battle, one side fighting to retain its liberty, the other to take it away; to which would you, at a guess, promise victory? Which men do you think would march more gallantly to combat – those who anticipate as a reward for their suffering the maintenance of their freedom, or those who cannot expect any other prize for the blows exchanged than the enslavement of others? One side will have before its eyes the blessings of the past and the hope of similar joy in the future; their thoughts will dwell less on the comparatively brief pain of battle than on what they may have to endure forever they, their children, and all their posterity.

In this case it was two (okay, a team back there somewhere) against fifty thousand.

Or:
Thus the despot subdues his subjects, some of them by means of others, and thus is he protected by those from whom, if thy were decent men, he would have to guard himself; just as, in order to split wood, one has to use a wedge of wood itself. Such are his archers, his guards his halberdiers; not that they themselves do not suffer occasionally at his hands, but this riff-raff, abandoned alike by God and man, can be led to endure evil if permitted to commit it, not against him who exploits them, but against those who like themselves submit, but are helpless…

Matt, it would be great to have someone on to talk about Etienne de La Boetie! and/or, Frederic Bastiat