Edward Gibbon on the delusion of a benign dictatorship

[The Romans] must often have recollected the instability of a happiness which depended on the character of a single man. The fatal moment was perhaps approaching, when some licentious youth, or some jealous tyrant would abuse, to the destruction of that absolute power, which they had exerted for the benefit of their people. The ideal restraints of the senate and the laws might serve to display the virtues, but could never correct the vices of the emperor.

~ Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Volume I, Chapter III, Part II)

Edward Gibbon on democracy and the decline of the Roman empire

Under a democratical government, the citizens exercise the powers of sovereignty; and those powers will be first abused, and afterwards lost, if they are committed to an unwieldy multitude. 

~ Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776), Volume I, Chapter II, Part I