« `...` If a sane human being observes the world, I don't think he can not find material for action. page 160 »

« The child cannot know at birth which language he will learn, but he must know that his grammar must be of a predetermined form that excludes many imaginable languages. Having s e l e c ted an acceptable hypothesis, he may use the inductive evidence for corrective action, confirming or disproving his choice. Once the hypothesis is sufficiently confirmed, the child knows the language defined by this hypothesis; his knowledge therefore extends much further than his experience and actually leads him to characterize some of the experience data as incomplete and deviant. »

« For Aristotle, democracy must necessarily be participatory (even if it excludes women and slaves in particular) and aim for the common good. To function, it must ensure that all citizens enjoy relative equality, average but "sufficient" wealth and sustainable access to property. In other words, Aristotle considers that a regime cannot be seriously described as democratic if the inequalities between rich and poor are too great. for him, true democracy corresponds to what would be described today as a welfare state, but in a radical form that goes far beyond anything we could envisage in the 20th century. The idea that great fortunes and democracy could not coexist would make its way to the Enlightenment and classical liberalism, especially among figures such as Alexis de Tocqueville, Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson, who more or less assumed the implications. /.../ James Madison (fourth president of the United States from 1809 to 1817), far from being stupid, was aware of the problem, but, unlike Aristotle, he was working to limit democracy. In his view, the main objective of a government was to "protect the minority of the possessed from the majority." /.../ Madison therefore devised a system to prevent democracy from functioning, where power would be held by "a team of the most competent men", those to whom "the wealth of the nation" belonged. Over the years, other citizens would be relegated to the margins or divided in various ways: redistricting of electoral districts, obstacles to trade union struggles and labour cooperation, exploitation of inter-ethnic conflicts, etc. /.../ It is highly unlikely that what is now considered the "inevitable consequences of the market" can be tolerated in a truly democratic society. »