John Stuart Mill on paternalistic government

The worth of the State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it; and a State which postpones the interest of their mental expansion and elevation to a little more of administrative skill, or of that semblance of it which practice gives in the details of business; 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 power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish.

~ John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, p. 187