The full quote is: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” It was first said by Franklin in a letter written in 1755 to the colonial governor of what was then the Province of Pennsylvania. While widely quoted, it doesn’t mean what most people take it to mean.
The Pennsylvania Assembly was in a battle with their governor over its power to tax the Penn family’s holdings in order to fund the colony’s military efforts during the French and Indian War. The Penn family (all of whom lived in England) pressured the governor into vetoing all attempts to tax the Penn’s (an easy task since they had appointed him and had the power to remove him from office).
Instead, the Penn family wanted to give the colonists a one-time cash payment in exchange for the Assembly declaring that it lacked the authority to tax their lands. Franklin thought it was appalling that the Pennsylvania Assembly would be asked to surrender it’s right to self-government (that is, it’s “essential Liberty”) for an amount of money too small to guarantee the colony’s long-term protection (that is, “a little temporary Safety”).
In other words, it is an assertion of the government’s role in assuring the security of its people, not a taking of sides regarding the balance between state power and individual liberty.
THAT SAID…
The fact that the quote did not originally mean what it is often taken to mean does not entail that there isn’t a lesson to be found within it about the relationship between the state and the individual. It just means we can’t lean on an appeal to Franklin’s authority or to his intentions with regard to this particular statement when deriving that lesson.