"I have grown disgusted with such freedom..."

 

I have grown disgusted with such freedom. If anyone had told us that this was the freedom we were going to taste, we would have begged God to leave us under the Turks for that many more years, until men had learned what fatherland means, what religion means, what honor, virtue, and integrity mean. These things are lacking in all of us. May God have mercy and save us from the great precipice toward which we are rushing to be dashed to pieces.

Fatherland, fatherland, how unfortunate you have been in the men chosen to govern you! God alone—He alone, the true and just ruler—governs you and preserves you still!

- General Yannis Makriyannis (+1864), Απομνημονεύματα [Memoirs], Book B', Chapter 12.