The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.

Even those who had been enriched by their own industry, could hardly base their proprietorship on better claims. It was in vain to repeat: ‘I built this well; I gained this spot by my industry’. Who gave you your standing, it might be answered, and what right have you to demand payment of us for doing what we never asked you to do? Do you not know that numbers of your fellow-creatures are starving, for want of what you have too much of? You ought to have had the express and universal consent of mankind, before appropriating more of the common subsistence than you needed for your own maintanance.

I am far from thinking that the ascendancy which women have obtained over men is an evil in itself. It is a present which nature has made them for the good of mankind. If better directed, it might be productive of as much good, as it is now of evil. We are not sufficiently sensible of what advantage it would be to society to give a better education to that half of our species which governs the other. Men will always be what women choose to make them. If you wish then that they should be noble and virtuous, let women be taught what greatness of soul and virtue are. The reflections which this subject arouses, and which Plato formerly made, deserve to be more fully developed by a pen worthy of following so great a master, and defending so great a cause.

Uw redacteur is zo blij als een kind met nieuwe lettertjes, en wel de volgende :

Louis Paul Boon – Zomer te Ter-Muren
Jefferson and the Rights of Man
Jean-Jacques Rousseau – The social contract and discourses

Om de eerste te citeren:

En dan – ach het is weeral een zee, een chaos en nog m??r, het spijt mij genoeg – maar het is niet meer zozeer de roman van het socialisme, het is meer de roman van de enkeling in een wereld van barbaren: dit boek is opgedragen aan u, dit boek is enkel en allen geschreven voor u – gij enkeling, midden deze wereld van barbaren