Frederic Bastiat famous quotes

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

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

If socialists mean that under extraordinary circumstances, for urgent cases, the State should set aside some resources to assist certain unfortunate people, to help them adjust to changing conditions, we will, of course, agree. This is done now; we desire that it be done better. There is however, a point on this road that must not be passed; it is the point where governmental foresight would step in to replace individual foresight and thus destroy it.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Mean #People #Desire

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

Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism - including, of course, legal despotism?
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Liberty #Destruction #Despotism

The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Liberty #Causes #Worst

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

#Long #Liberty #Doe

Often the masses are plundered and do not know it.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Philosophy #Political #Economics

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

#Government #Democracy #Politics

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

#Monopoly #Should #States

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

#Taken #Class #Plunder

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

#Exercise #Understanding #Liberty

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 #Government #Ideas

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

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 #Evil #Liberty

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 #Economic

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 #Want

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

#Government #Law #Giving

The plans differ; the planners are all alike...
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Liberty #Economic #Plans

And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Trying #Liberty #May

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

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Inspirational #Humor #Government

By virtue of exchange, one man's prosperity is beneficial to all others.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Men #Liberty #Prosperity

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

#Liberty #Economic #Economy

Law cannot organize labor and industry without organizing injustice.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Law #Injustice #Organize

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

#Self #Law #Liberty

The mission of the law is not to oppress persons and plunder them of their property, even though the law may be acting in a philanthropic spirit. Its purpose is to protect persons and property.... If you exceed this proper limit -- if you attempt to make the law religious, fraternal, equalizing, philanthropic, industrial, or artistic -- you will then be lost in uncharted territory, in vagueness and uncertainty, in a forced utopia or, even worse, in a multitude of utopias, each striving to seize the law and impose it on you.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Religious #Law #Acting

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 #Liberty #Alternatives

If goods don't cross borders, armies will.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Army #Borders #Crosses

If you wish to prosper, let your customer prosper.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Business #Wish

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

#Men #Leader #Political

Competition is merely the absence of oppression.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Competition #Oppression #Absence

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

#Order #Justice #Liberty

When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Soldier #Borders #Crosses

When, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Doe #Painful #Plunder

Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Law #Doe #Property

The law is the collective organization of the individual's right to lawful defense of his life, liberty and property. When it is used for anything else, no matter how noble the cause, it becomes perverted and justice is weakened. Thus, the law has become perverted by stupid greed and false philanthropy.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Stupid #Law #Organization

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

#Sacrifice #Men #Self

The people who, during the election, were so wise, so moral, so perfect, now have no tendencies whatever; or if they have any, they are tendencies that lead downward to degradation. . . . 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

#Wise #People #Perfect

Justice is achieved only when injustice is absent.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Justice #Injustice #Absent

They would be the shepherds over us, their sheep. Certainly such an arrangement presupposes that they are naturally superior to the rest of us. And certainly we are fully justified in demanding from the legislators and organizers proof of this natural superiority.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Sheep #Shepherds #Would Be

...the statement, "The purpose of the law is to cause justice to reign," is not a rigorously accurate statement. It ought to be stated that the purpose of the law is to prevent injustice from reigning. In fact, it is injustice, instead of justice, that has an existence of its own. Justice is achieved only when injustice is absent.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Law #Justice #Liberty

The balance of trade is an article of faith.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Balance #Imbalance #Trade

But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. The process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Running #Responsibility #Order

All you have to do, is to see whether the law takes from some what belongs to them in order to give it to others to whom it does not belong. We must see whether the law performs, for the profit of one citizen and to the detriment of others, an act which that citizen could not perform himself without being guilty of a crime. Repeal such a law without delay. ... [I]f you don't take care, what begins by being an exception tends to become general, to multiply itself, and to develop into a veritable system.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Order #Law #Giving

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

#Heart #Names #Liberty

The law commit legal plunder by violating liberty and property.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Law #Voting #Liberty

The impulses of my heart are the voice of Nature, which is never mistaken. The institutions that stand in my way are man-made and are only arbitrary conventions to which I have never given my consent. In trampling these institutions underfoot, I shall have the double pleasure of satisfying my inclinations and of believing myself a hero
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Hero #Believe #Heart

The state tends to expand in proportion to its means of existence and to live beyond its means, and these are, in the last analysis, nothing but the substance of the people. Woe to the people that cannot limit the sphere of action of the state! Freedom, private enterprise, wealth, happiness, independence, personal dignity, all vanish.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Mean #People #Voting

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 #Errors

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

#Race #Viewpoints #Economic

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

When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Struggle #Sacrifice #Effort

What, then is law [government]? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Organization #Government #Law

The politician attempts to remedy the evil by increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Evil #Liberty #Libertarian

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

#Differences #Economist #Accounts

I believe that my theory is correct; for whatever be the question upon which I am arguing, whether it be religious, philosophical, political, or economical; whether it affects well-being, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, property, labor, exchange, capital, wages, taxes, population, credit, or Government; at whatever point of the scientific horizon I start from, I invariably come to the same thing—the solution of the social problem is in liberty.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Religious #Believe #Philosophical

Slavery, protection, and monopoly find defenders, not only in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer by them.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Suffering #Slavery #Protection

Trade protection accumulates upon a single point the good which it effects, while the evil inflicted is infused throughout the mass. The one strikes the eye at a first glance, while the other becomes perceptible only to close investigation.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Eye #Evil #Firsts

You compare the nation to a parched piece of land and the tax to a life-giving rain. So be it. But you should also ask yourself where this rain comes from, and whether it is not precisely the tax that draws the moisture from the soil and dries it up. You should also ask yourself further whether the soil receives more of this precious water from the rain than it loses by the evaporation?
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Rain #Land #Giving

Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Encouragement #Jobs #School

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

#Law #Long #Purpose

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

#Safety #Guarantees #Function

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

#Law #Acting #May

Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Reform #Tasks #Would Be

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

#Thinking #Judging #Humanity

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

#Men #Self #Doubt

This question of legal plunder must be settled once and for all, and there are only three ways to settle it: (1) The few plunder the many. (2) Everybody plunders everybody. (3) Nobody plunders anybody.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Liberty #Three #Way

It is indeed a singular thing that people wish to pass laws to nullify the disagreeable consequences that the law of responsibility entails. Will they never realize that they do not eliminate these consequences but merely pass them along to other people? The result is one injustice the more and one moral the less.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Responsibility #Law #People

Who then would not like to see these benefits flow upon the world from the law, as from an inexhaustible source?... But is it possible?... Whence does the State draw those resources that it is urged to dispense by way of benefits to individuals? Is it not from the individuals themselves? How, then, can these resources be increased by passing through the hands of a parasitic and voracious intermediary?
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Hands #Law #Doe

It is not true that the legislator has absolute power over our persons and property, since they pre-exist, and his work is only to secure them from injury. It is not true that the mission of the law is to regulate our consciences, our ideas, our will, our education, our sentiments, our works, our exchanges, our gifts, our enjoyments. Its mission is to prevent the rights of one from interfering with those of another, in any one of these things.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Rights #Law #Ideas

But we assure the socialists that we repudiate only forced organization, not natural organization. We repudiate the forms of association that are forced upon us, not free association. We repudiate forced fraternity, not true fraternity. We repudiate the artificial unity that does nothing more than deprive persons of individual responsibility. We do not repudiate the natural unity of mankind under Providence.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Responsibility #Organization #Unity

Let us first of all frugality in government-peace and freedom we will have as a bonus.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Government #Bonus #Firsts

Legal plunder has two roots: One, as we have just seen, is in human selfishness; the other is in false philanthropy.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Two #Roots #Selfishness

No society can exist if respect for the law does not to some extent prevail; but the surest way to have the laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality are in contradiction, the citizen finds himself in the cruel dilemma of either losing his moral sense or of losing respect for the law, two evils of which one is as great as the other, and between which it is difficult to choose.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Law #Two #Evil

The sort of dependence that results from exchange, i.e., from commercial transactions, is a reciprocal dependence. We cannot be dependent upon a foreigner without his being dependent on us. Now, this is what constitutes the very essence of society. To sever natural interrelations is not to make oneself independent, but to isolate oneself completely.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Independent #Essence #Liberty

The profit of the one is the profit of the other.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Profit

We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life - physical, intellectual, and moral life.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Intellectual #Politics #Moral

Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain - and since labor is pain in itself - it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions, neither religion nor morality can stop it. When, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Pain #Men #Doe

It is easier to show the disorder that must accompany reform than the order that should follow it.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Order #Society #Reform

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

#Competition #Rich #Economics

Thus, if there exists a law which sanctions slavery or monopoly, oppression or robbery, in any form whatever, it must not even be mentioned. For how can it be mentioned without damaging the respect which it inspires? Still further, morality and political economy must be taught from the point of view of this law; from the supposition that it must be a just law merely because it is a law. Another effect of this tragic perversion of the law is that it gives an exaggerated importance to political passions and conflicts, and to politics in general.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Passion #Law #Views

The solution of the social problem is in liberty.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Liberty #Problem #Social

Legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways; hence, there are an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, bonuses, subsidies, incentives, the progressive income tax, free education, the right to employment, the right to profit, the right to wages, the right to relief, the right to the tools of production, interest free credit, etc., etc. And it the aggregate of all these plans, in respect to what they have in common, legal plunder, that goes under the name of socialism.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Names #Numbers #Bonus

Repetition may not entertain, but it teaches.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Motivational #May #Repetition

In fact, if law were restricted to protecting all persons, all liberties, and all properties; if law were nothing more than the organized combination of the individual's right to self-defense; if law were the obstacle, the check, the punisher of all oppression and plunder - is it likely that we citizens would then argue much about the extent of the franchise?
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Self #Law #Liberty

Try to imagine a system of labor imposed by force that is not a violation of liberty; a transfer of wealth imposed by force that is not a violation of property rights. If you cannot do so, then you must agree that the law cannot organize labor and industry without organizing injustice.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Law #Rights #Trying

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

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

I find it hard to understand why those who demand Unitary Education by the State do not also demand a Unitary Press by the State... Either the State is infallible, in which case we could not do better than to submit to it the entire domain of intelligent thought, or it is not, in which case it is no more rational to hand over education to it than the press.
-- Frederic Bastiat

#Intelligent #Hands #Political

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

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