Nations, as well as men, almost always betray the most prominent features of their future destiny in their earliest years. - Alexis de Tocqueville

Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions: they want to be led, and they wish to remain free. As they cannot destroy either the one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once. They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite: they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large who hold the end of his chain.

I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.

Furthermore, when citizens are all almost equal, it becomes difficult for them to defend their independence against the aggressions of power.