`the best laid plans of mice and men'
"The best laid schemes o' mice an' men ...." (来源：专业英语学习网站 http://www.EnglishCN.com)

`Man was born free, but he is everywhere enslaved.'
"Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they." [Jean Jacques Rousseau]; "It is often safer to be in chains than to be free." [Franz Kafka]

`I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.'
"I am escaped with the skin of my teeth."

`All is lost, save life and honor.'
"The only thing left to me is honor, and my life is saved."

`To whom much is given, much more is expected.'
"From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." [Luke 12:48, NIV]; "Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more." [Luke 12:48, ESV Bible]

`From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.'
"In a higher phase of communist society ... only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be fully left behind and society inscribe on its banners: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." [Karl H. Marx, quoting Comte de Saint-Simon; originating in the "primitive communism" of early Christianity: "gave to each according to his ability" (Matthew 25:15); "according to each day's need" (Kings 8:59)]; "Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them." [Romans 12:6]; "... from each according to his ability, to each according to his possibility." [Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn]

`Don't swap horses in midstream.'
"Don't swap horses." [1864 Republican campaign motto; based upon 1840s-era joke, told 9 June 1864 as an anecdote by Abraham Lincoln: "It is not best to swap horses when crossing streams."] [nb: parodied as "Don't swap barrels when going over Niagara Falls!" in 1932 campaign by Democrats about Republicans; then adopted exactly as 1864 motto for Democrat slogan in both 1940 and 1944 campaigns]

`You're either with me or against me.'
"He who is not with me is against me," Matthew 12:30 Bible]

`If you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the problem.'
"Be part of the answer, not part of the problem, as the American revolution proceeds." [Buell Gallagher at 1964 CCNY address; "You're either part of the solution or part of the problem." Eldridge Cleaver at 1968 San Francisco speech]

"... and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from earth." [19 Nov 1863 Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln]
"... government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people" [26 Jan 1830 U.S. Senate speech by Daniel Webster]; "This is what I call the American idea — a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people." [1850 Boston speech by Theodore Parker]

`That government which governs least governs best.'
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." [Thomas Paine (1776)]; "Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay." [Percy Bysshe Shelley (1812)]; "All government is evil.... The best government is that which governs least." [John L. O'Sullivan (1837)]; "That government is best which governs least." [Henry David Thoreau (1844)]; "... that country is governed best which is governed least." [Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1851)]; "In the kingdom the multiplication of prohibitive enactments increases the poverty of the people; the more implements to add to their profit that the people have, the greater disorder is there in the state and clan; the more acts of crafty dexterity that men possess, the more do strange contrivances appear; the more display there is of legislation, the more thieves and robbers there are." [Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching #57 (?600BC)]

`For evil to triumph, it is only necessary for good men to do nothing.'
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." [attributed to Edmund Burke by John F. Kennedy, but is probably a paraphrase of Burke's "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one...." (1770)] [also, "The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." attributed to Plato by the Constitution Party (1952)] ["He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." Martin Luther King Jr (1958); also "some men wish evil and accomplish it ... [most] just let it happen." Stephen Vincent Benet (1928)]

`Anyone who is not liberal before midlife has no heart; and anyone who is still liberal after midlife has no head!'
"Any man who is not liberal when young has no heart; and any man who is not conservative when old has no head!" [Theodore Roosevelt; also "Any man who is not something of a socialist before he is forty has no heart. Any man who is still a socialist after he is forty has no head." Wendell L. Willkie]

`Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.'
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." [by Wendell Phillips (1852); misattributed to Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry]