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Frédéric Bastiat Quotes

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

"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

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

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

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

"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

"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. 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, The Law 1850

" The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." Frederic Bastiat

"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, The Law

"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." Frédéric Bastiat

"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, The Law