I do not hesitate to say that the road to eminence and power, from an obscure condition, ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the rarest of all things, it ought to pass through some sort of probation. The temple of honor ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be open through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle.
Edmund Burke (1790). “Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the proceedings in certain societies in London, relative to that event. In a letter intended to have been sent to a gentleman in Paris ... The seventh edition”, p.74
