“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
Attributed to George Orwell, though there’s some debate about that.
I’ve seen this quoted with no small amount of pride. If Orwell in fact said it, I don’t think he meant it that way.
He definitely said something to that effect, but it was about coal miners in ‘The Road To Wigan Pier’
harder to fetishise that though
Nor Orwell, apparently
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/List_of_misquotations
The source of the quote is really not the issue here, folks.