Tell them not that by this blind surrender of themselves to an exclusive passion they risk their dearest interests: they are deaf.

Show them not freedom escaping from their grasp, whilst they are looking another way: they are blind--or rather, they can discern but one sole object to be desired in the universe.
What I have said is applicable to all democratic nations: what I am about to say concerns the French alone.

Amongst most modern nations, and especially amongst all those of the Continent of Europe, the taste and the idea of freedom only began to exist and to extend themselves at the time when social conditions were tending to equality, and as a consequence of that very equality.

Absolute kings were the most efficient levellers of ranks amongst their subjects.

Amongst these nations equality preceded freedom: equality was therefore a fact of some standing when freedom was still a novelty: the one had already created customs, opinions, and laws belonging to it, when the other, alone and for the first time, came into actual existence.