"If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they might indeed wait forever."

 

"Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learnt to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they might indeed wait forever."

~ English historian Thomas Babington Macaulay, from his 1825 essay "Milton"