The civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.
Brave New World Revisited,
A. Huxley
The quote comes form his "Study on Sovereignty" and is couched in the context of a discussion of whether monarchy addresses the problems associated with sovereignty.
Maistre begins from the proposition that all sovereignty, whether it is possessed by a single a man or a democracy, is absolute. It follows from this proposition that the revolutionary equation of absolute sovereignty with bad government is erroneous. The question must turn instead on whether absolute sovereignty is employed for cruel or just ends, and Maistre finds that the revolutionaries (among other faults) assume that the people will wield absolute sovereignty more justly than an individual.