Top 100 Frederic Bastiat Quotes
#1. But the law is made, generally, by one man, or by one class of men. And as law cannot exist without the sanction and the support of a preponderating force, it must finally place this force in the hands of those who legislate. This
Frederic Bastiat
#2. In short, is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does not harm other persons while doing so?
Frederic Bastiat
#3. Life, faculties, production-in other words, individuality, liberty, property-this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.
Frederic Bastiat
#4. Legislators have almost always been ignorant of the object of society, which is to unite families by a common interest.
Frederic Bastiat
#5. 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
#6. There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.
Frederic Bastiat
#7. Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property.
Frederic Bastiat
#8. I assure that I should breathe my last without pain and almost with joy if I were certain of leaving to the friends who love me, not poignant regrets, but a gentle, affectionate, somewhat melancholy remembrance of me.
Frederic Bastiat
#9. The price of labor, like the price of everything else, is governed by the relation of supply to demand.
Frederic Bastiat
#10. Money only appears for the sake of facilitating the arrangements between the parties.
Frederic Bastiat
#11. Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough.
Frederic Bastiat
#12. Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone.
Frederic Bastiat
#13. Money serves only to facilitate the transmission of these useful things from one to another,
Frederic Bastiat
#14. And this is what has taken place. The delusion of the day is to enrich all classes at the expense of each other; it is to generalize plunder under pretense of organizing it.
Frederic Bastiat
#15. Monopoly, like every other system of injustice, carries in itself its own punishment.
Frederic Bastiat
#16. We cannot but be astonished at the ease with which men resign themselves to ignorance about what is most important for them to know; and we may be certain that they are determined to remain invincibly ignorant if they once come to consider it as axiomatic that there are no absolute principles.
Frederic Bastiat
#17. And what is liberty, whose very name makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world? Is it not the union of all liberties - liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of travel, or labor, or trade?
Frederic Bastiat
#18. Existence, faculties, assimilation - in other words, personality, liberty, property - this is man.
Frederic Bastiat
#19. There are two principles between which there can be no compromise - liberty and coercion.
Frederic Bastiat
#21. Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.
Frederic Bastiat
#22. Man acquires wealth in proportion as he puts his labor to better account.
Frederic Bastiat
#23. There is not a tool, an implement, or a machine that has not resulted in a decrease in the contribution of human labor. Labor is not made permanently idle [though]; when replaced in one special category ... it turns its attack against other obstacles on the main road to progress.
Frederic Bastiat
#24. As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose
that it may violate property instead of protecting it
then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder.
Frederic Bastiat
#25. the public has two hopes, and Government makes two promises - many benefits and no taxes. Hopes and promises that, being contradictory, can never be realized.
Frederic Bastiat
#26. This line of reasoning brings us to a challenging question: If people are as incapable, as immoral, and as ignorant as the politicians indicate, then why is the right of these same people to vote defended with such passionate insistence?
Frederic Bastiat
#27. There is no doubt that two nations, the same as two men, unconnected with each other, may, by working more, and working better, prosper at the same time, without injuring each other.
Frederic Bastiat
#29. When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
Frederic Bastiat
#30. No one borrows money for the sake of the money itself; money is only the medium by which to obtain possession of products.
Frederic Bastiat
#31. It is easy to conceive that, according to the power of the legislator, it destroys for its own profit, and in different degrees, amongst the rest of the community, personal independence by slavery, liberty by oppression, and property by plunder. It
Frederic Bastiat
#32. Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?
Frederic Bastiat
#33. Legal plunder has two roots: One of them, as I have said before, is in human greed; the other is in false philanthropy.
Frederic Bastiat
#34. The law has been perverted by the influence of two entirely different causes: stupid greed and false philanthropy. Let us speak of the first.
Frederic Bastiat
#35. The problem is, not to find whether the picture is mournful, but whether it is true. And for that we have the testimony of history.
Frederic Bastiat
#36. But yet he may live and enjoy, by seizing and appropriating the productions of the faculties of his fellow men. This is the origin of plunder. Now,
Frederic Bastiat
#37. The mission of law is not to oppress persons and plunder them of their property, even thought the law may be acting in a philanthropic spirit. Its mission is to protect property.
Frederic Bastiat
#38. [To learn] is to harness Nature; to spare man all that is most physical, backbreaking, and brutish in the work of production; to make mind master over matter.
Frederic Bastiat
#39. the common force cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, the liberty, or the property of individuals or of classes. For
Frederic Bastiat
#40. It is not true that the legislator has absolute power over our persons and property. The existence of persons and property preceded the existence of the legislator, and his function is only to guarantee their safety.
Frederic Bastiat
#41. Countries which enjoy the highest level of peace, happiness and prosperity are the ones where the law least interfered with private affairs.
Frederic Bastiat
#43. 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
#44. 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
#45. the decisive proof that the people are dupes is when the priest is rich and powerful.
Frederic Bastiat
#46. No legal plunder: This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony, and logic. Until the day of my death, I shall proclaim this principle with all the force of my lungs (which alas! is all too inadequate).
Frederic Bastiat
#47. For what are our faculties, but the extension of our personality? and what is property, but an extension of our faculties?
Frederic Bastiat
#48. The law can be an instrument of equalization only as it takes from some persons and gives to other persons. When the law does this, it is an instrument of plunder.
Frederic Bastiat
#49. By virtue of exchange, one man's prosperity is beneficial to all others.
Frederic Bastiat
#50. It would be impossible, therefore, to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this - the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder. What
Frederic Bastiat
#51. Indeed, a more astounding fact, in the heart of society, cannot be conceived than this: That law should have become an instrument of injustice.
Frederic Bastiat
#52. Finally, is not liberty the restricting of the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right of the individual to lawful self-defense; of punishing injustice?
Frederic Bastiat
#53. 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
#54. Our adversaries consider that an activity which is neither aided by supplies, nor regulated by government, is an activity destroyed. We think just the contrary. Their faith is in the legislator, not in mankind; ours is in mankind, not in the legislator.
Frederic Bastiat
#55. Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism - including, of course, legal despotism?
Frederic Bastiat
#56. To rob the public, it is necessary to deceive them. To deceive them, it is necessary to persuade them that they are robbed for their own advantage, and to induce them to accept in exchange for their property, imaginary services, and often worse.
Frederic Bastiat
#57. It often happens, that the sweeter the first fruit of a habit is, the more bitter are the consequences.
Frederic Bastiat
#58. Let us first of all frugality in government-peace and freedom we will have as a bonus.
Frederic Bastiat
#59. The creation of new capital always ... releases ... labor. Its actual effect [though] is not to make jobs scarce, but to free men's labor for other jobs.
Frederic Bastiat
#60. They will come to learn in the end, at their own expense, that it is better to endure competition for rich customers than to be invested with monopoly over impoverished customers.
Frederic Bastiat
#61. When a portion of wealth passes out of the hands of him who has acquired it, without his consent, and without compensation, to him who has not created it, whether by force or by artifice, I say that property is violated, that plunder is perpetrated.
Frederic Bastiat
#62. The law has been perverted through the influence of two very different causes-naked greed and misconceived philanthropy.
Frederic Bastiat
#63. At all events, let no one claim that because an abuse cannot be done away with, without inconvenience to those who profit by it, what has been suffered to exist for a time should be allowed to exist forever.
Frederic Bastiat
#64. We should not see those great displacements of capital, of labor, and of population, that legislative measures occasion; displacements that render so uncertain and precarious the very sources of existence, and thus enlarge to such an extent the responsibility of Governments.
Frederic Bastiat
#65. A man who has a head and hands is seldom left long in a state of destitution.
Frederic Bastiat
#66. The truth, in plain terms, is this: That men consume cloth and corn by fire or by using them, and that the effect is the same as regards money, but not as regards wealth, for it is precisely in the use of commodities that wealth or material prosperity consists.
Frederic Bastiat
#68. Treat all economic questions from the viewpoint of the consumer, for the interests of the consumer are the interests of the human race.
Frederic Bastiat
#69. Yes, as long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true mission, that it may violate property instead of securing it, 12everybody will be wanting to manufacture law,
Frederic Bastiat
#70. Just as in money we see the sign of wealth, we see also in paper money the sign of money; and thence conclude that there is a very easy and simple method of procuring for everybody the pleasures of fortune.
Frederic Bastiat
#71. Man does not live upon nominal values, but upon real products, and the more products there are, whatever be their price, the richer he is.
Frederic Bastiat
#72. It is well known that large numbers of poor people attribute their poverty to what they call the tyranny of capital; meaning thereby the unwillingness of the owners of capital to allow others to use it without security for its safe return and compensation for its use.
Frederic Bastiat
#73. Either fraternity is spontaneous, or it does not exist. To decree it is to annihilate it. The law can indeed force men to remain just; in vain would it would try to force them to be self-sacrificing.
Frederic Bastiat
#74. 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
#75. Liberty is an acknowledgement of faith in God and his works.
Frederic Bastiat
#76. There is in all of a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are "just" because the law makes them so.
Frederic Bastiat
#77. 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
#78. If everyone enjoyed the unrestricted use of his faculties and the free disposition of the fruits of his labor, social progress would be ceaseless, uninterrupted, and unfailing.
Frederic Bastiat
#79. Despoilers obey the Malthusian law; they multiply with the means of existence, and the means of existence of knaves is the credulity of their dupes.
Frederic Bastiat
#80. Property, the right to enjoy the fruits of one's labor, the right to work, to develop, to exercise one's faculties, according to one's own understanding, without the state intervening otherwise than by its protective action; this is what is meant by liberty
Frederic Bastiat
#81. Society is the total of the forced or voluntary services that men perform for each other; that is to say, of public services and private services.
Frederic Bastiat
#82. Mr. de Lamartine once wrote to me thusly: "Your doctrine is only the half of my program. You have stopped at liberty; I go on to fraternity." I answered him: "The second half of your program will destroy the first.
Frederic Bastiat
#83. When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it
without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud
to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed.
Frederic Bastiat
#84. Nothing is more senseless than to base so many expectations on the state, that is, to assume the existence of collective wisdom and foresight after taking for granted the existence of individual imbecility and improvidence.
Frederic Bastiat
#85. In the first place, the word universal conceals a gross sophism.
Frederic Bastiat
#86. The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.
Frederic Bastiat
#87. On a wrong road, inconsistency is inevitable; if it were not so, mankind would be sacrificed. A false principle never has been, and never will be, carried out to the end.
Frederic Bastiat
#88. To take by violence is not to produce, but to destroy. Truly, if taking by violence was producing, this country of ours would be a little richer than she is.
Frederic Bastiat
#89. 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
#90. If you wish to prosper, let your customer prosper. When people have learned this lesson, everyone will seek his individual welfare in the general welfare. Then jealousies between man and man, city and city, province and province, nation and nation, will no longer trouble the world.
Frederic Bastiat
#93. Rousseau. - Although this politician, the paramount authority of the Democrats, makes the social edifice rest upon the general will, no one has so completely admitted the hypothesis of the entire passiveness of human nature in the presence of the lawgiver: - "If
Frederic Bastiat
#95. In general, however, these gentlemen, the reformers, legislators, and politicians, do not desire to exercise an immediate despotism over mankind. No, they are too moderate and too philanthropic for that. They only contend for the despotism, the absolutism, the omnipotence of the law.
Frederic Bastiat
#96. In war, the stronger overcomes the weaker. In business, the stronger imparts strength to the weaker.
Frederic Bastiat
#97. We cannot doubt that self-interest is the mainspring of human nature. It must be clearly understood that this word is used here to designate a universal, incontestable fact, resulting from the nature of man, and not an adverse judgment, as would be the word selfishness.
Frederic Bastiat
#98. When an abuse has once taken root everything is arranged on the assumption of its continuance.
Frederic Bastiat
#100. It is easier to show the disorder that must accompany reform than the order that should follow it.
Frederic Bastiat
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