The Thinking Tyrant, Lament of

Being an absolute ruler today was not as easy as people thought. At least, it was not simple if your ambitions included being an absolute ruler tomorrow. There were subtleties. Oh, you could order men to smash down doors and drag people off to dungeons without trial, but too much of that sort of thing was bad for business, habit-forming, style-lacking, and very, very dangerous for your health. A thinking tyrant, it seemed to Vetinari, had a much harder job than a ruler raised to power by some idiot vote-yourself-rich system like democracy. At least he could tell the people he was their fault [69].

Pratchett, Terry. Going Postal. HarperCollins, 2004. ISBN 0060502932