John Stuart Mill ends his "On Liberty" this way:
"The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it...a State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital powr which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish."

The man from "Notes from Underground" (Dostoyevsky):
"My jokes, gentlemen, are certainly in bad taste, they are awkward, stumbling, full of self-distrust.  But that, of course, is because I don't respect myself.  Can a man of conscious intelligence have any self-respect to speak of?"