Long (but good!!) quote from Thucydides

[somnium_exciens]

Now, in human societies the death penalty has been laid down for many offences less serious then this one. Yet people still take risks when they feel sufficiently confident. No one has ever yet risked committing a crime which he thought he could not carry out successfully. The same is true of states. None has ever yet rebelled in the belief that it had insufficient resources, either in itself of from its allies, to make the attempt. Cities and individuals alike, all are by nature disposed to do wrong, and there is no law that will prevent it, as is shown by the fact that men have tried every kind of punishment, constantly adding to the list, in the attempt to find greater security from criminals. It is likely that in early times the punishments even for the greatest crimes were not as severe as they are now, but the laws were still broken, and in the course of time the death penalty became generally introduced. Yet even with this, the laws are still broken. Either, therefore, we must discover some fear more potent than fear of death, or we must admit that here certainly we have not got an adequate deterrent. So long as poverty forces men to be bold, so long as the insolence and pride of wealth nourish their ambitions, and in the other accidents of life they are continually dominated by some incurable master passion or another, so long will their impulses continue to drive them into danger. Hope and desire persist throughout and cause the greatest calamities - one leading and the other following, one conceiving the enterprise, and the other suggesting it will be successful - invisible factors., but more powerful than the terrors that are obvious to our eyes. Then too, the idea that fortune will be on one’s side plays as big a part as anything else in creating a mood of over confidence; for sometimes she does not come unexpectedly to one’s aid, and so she tempts men to run risks for which they are inadequately prepared. And this is particularly true in the case of whole peoples, because they are playing for the highest stakes - either for their own freedom or for the power to control others - and each individual, when acting as part of the community, has the irrational opinion that his own powers are greater than in fact they are. In a word it is impossible (and only the most simple-minded will deny this) for human nature, when once seriously set upon a certain course, to be prevented from following that course by the force of law or by nay other means of intimidation whatever.
--History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. (3.45)