I have come across this in Crash Course World History. It is at 6 minutes and 55 seconds. Here it goes:
You also had statesmen like Pericles, whose famous funeral oration brags about the golden democracy of Athens with rhetorics that wouldn't sound out of place today. "If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences... If a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition."
I am aware of what the words in the phrase mean itself, but still I have a hard time understanding what it means there.