Robert Michels

Take "liberty, equality, and fraternity," the great goals, it was believed, of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, and of the French Revolution. Anything, or nothing, can be meant by these terms. No two men are or can be equal in all things; all are equal in some. Michels reminds us that, after the Revolution, the three words appeared over the entrance of every French prison.

• The Machiavellians
  • p. 160 (Lume Books, 1943)