Frederic Bastiat Quotes

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• When misguided public opinion honors what is despicable and despises what is honorable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is useful, applauds falsehood and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns its back on progress and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Political, Honor, Progress

  177 Copy quote

• When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Life, Money, Men

  "Economic Sophisms". Book by Frédéric Bastiat, Second series, 1848.

  172 Copy quote

• If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?

  Frederic Bastiat

  Believe, Race, People

  "The Law". Book by Frederic Bastiat, 1850.

  151 Copy quote

• The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Government, Political, Democracy

  "The Libertarian Reader: Classic and Contemporary Writings from Lao Tzu to". Book by David Boaz, 1997.

  121 Copy quote

• Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all . . . . It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain

  Frederic Bastiat

  Spring, Ideas, Libertarian Party

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.26, Cosimo, Inc.

  173 Copy quote

• Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim - when he defends himself - as a criminal.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Law, Judging, Police

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.16, Cosimo, Inc.

  115 Copy quote

• The real cost of the State is the prosperity we do not see, the jobs that don’t exist, the technologies to which we do not have access, the businesses that do not come into existence, and the bright future that is stolen from us. The State has looted us just as surely as a robber who enters our home at night and steals all that we love.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Jobs, Real, Home

  60 Copy quote

• The most urgent necessity is, not that the State should teach, but that it should allow education. All monopolies are detestable, but the worst of all is the monopoly of education.

  Frederic Bastiat

  States, Monopoly, Should

  "What Is Money?". "Frédéric Bastiat, Essays on Political Economy", translated by David A. Wells, bastiat.org. 1877.

  130 Copy quote

• Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Government, Second Amendment, Liberty

  121 Copy quote

• When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Law, Government, Liberty

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.10, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

  87 Copy quote

• It's always tempting to do good at someone else's expense

  Frederic Bastiat

  Expenses, Tempting

  18 Copy quote

• Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Men, Law, Liberty

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.6, Cosimo, Inc.

  112 Copy quote

• Here I encounter the most popular fallacy of our times. It is not considered sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual and moral self-improvement. Instead, it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education, and morality throughout the nation. This is the seductive lure of socialism. And I repeat: these two uses of the law are in direct contradiction to each other.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Self, Law, Two

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.20, Cosimo, Inc.

  99 Copy quote

• People are beginning to realize that the apparatus of government is costly. But what they do not know is that the burden falls inevitably on them.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Fall, Government, People

  11 Copy quote

• But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Law, Government, Giving

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.18, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

  58 Copy quote

• If philanthropy is not voluntary, it destroys liberty and justice. The law can give nothing that has not first been taken from its owner.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Taken, Law, Giving

  88 Copy quote

• Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter, by peaceful or revolutionary means, into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Mean, Men, Law

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.9, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

  97 Copy quote

• We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Liberty, Want, Libertarian

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.30, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

  101 Copy quote

• Taking Five and Returning Four is not Giving

  Frederic Bastiat

  Giving, Four, Five

  13 Copy quote

• There are people who think that plunder loses all its immorality as soon as it becomes legal. Personally, I cannot imagine a more alarming situation.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Thinking, People, Liberty

  51 Copy quote

• Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Liberty, Economic, Economy

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.6, Cosimo, Inc.

  32 Copy quote

• It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Law, Government, Evil

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.10, Cosimo, Inc.

  19 Copy quote

• The law has been perverted, and the powers of the state have become perverted along with it. The law has not only been turned from its proper function, but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose. The law has become a tool for every kind of greed. Instead of preventing crime, the law itself is guilty of the abuses it is supposed to punish. If this is true, it is a serious matter, and moral duty requires me to call the attention of my fellow-citizens to it.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Law, Greed, Political

  21 Copy quote

• Since the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to allow them liberty, how comes it to pass that the tendencies of organizers are always good?

  Frederic Bastiat

  Liberty, Safe, Natural

  Frederic Bastiat (2017). “The Law”, p.34, Lulu.com

  8 Copy quote

• Society is composed of men, and every man is a FREE agent. Since man is free, he can choose; since he can choose, he can err; since he can err, he can suffer. I go further: He must err and he must suffer; for his starting point is ignorance, and in his ignorance he sees before him an infinite number of unknown roads, all of which save one lead to error.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Ignorance, Men, Numbers

  11 Copy quote

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