“When human statecraft attaches a chain to the feet of a free man, whom it makes a slave in contempt of nature and citizenship, eternal justice rivets the other end about the tyrant's neck.”

— Louis Antoine de Saint-Just

Fragment 3 (1794). [Source: Saint-Just, Fragments sur les institutions républicaines]

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Louis Antoine de Saint-Just 25

military and political leader 1767–1794

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Variant: No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.

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“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”

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“Feudalism is but a system of Slaves and Tyrants; my country, desiring to be free, can no longer preserve anything in this system.”

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La féodalité n'est qu'un système d'Esclaves et de Tyrans; ma patrie veut-être libre, ne peut plus rien conserver dans ce qui tient à ce système.
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Context: The effects of the late civil strife have been to free the slave and make him a citizen. Yet he is not possessed of the civil rights which citizenship should carry with it. This is wrong, and should be corrected. To this correction I stand committed, so far as Executive influence can avail.

“Ay, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are!
From this hour let the blood in their dastardly veins,
That shrunk at the first touch of Liberty's war,
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Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

On the Entry of the Austrians into Naples (1821).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“When human statecraft attaches a chain to the feet of a free man, whom it makes a slave in contempt of nature and citizenship, eternal justice rivets the other end about the tyrant's neck.”

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Louis Antoine de Saint-Just 25

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