Liberty and Freedom are complex concepts. They go back to religious ideas of
Free Will and are related to the Ruler Mystique implicit in absolute monarchs.
Without absolute monarchs patterned after the Old Gods and ruling by the gra
ce of a belief in religious indulgence, Liberty and Freedom would never have g
ained their present meaning. These ideals owe their very existence to past ex
amples of oppression. And the forces that maintain such ideas will erode unle
ss renewed by dramatic teaching or new oppressions. This is the most basic ke
y to my life.

-Leto II, God Emperor of Dune: Dar-es-Balat Records