Alexis de Tocqueville on man's passion for equality

There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality that incites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.

~ Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
 

(Cited by Anthony Esolen in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization, p. 229.)