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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

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Frederic Bastiat
Age: 49 †
Born: 1801
Born: June 30
Died: 1850
Died: December 24
Economist
Essayist
Magistrate
Philosopher
Politician
Baiona
Claude Frédéric Bastiat
Individual
Sphere
Self
Spheres
Injustice
Right
Rational
Defense
Restricting
Finally
Punishing
Liberty
Lawful
Law
Organizing

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When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
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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.
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It is easier to show the disorder that must accompany reform than the order that should follow it.
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Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone.
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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?
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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.
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If goods don't cross borders, armies will.
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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.
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Treat all economic questions from the viewpoint of the consumer, for the interests of the consumer are the interests of the human race.
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...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.
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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.
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The politician attempts to remedy the evil by increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder.
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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.
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The profit of the one is the profit of the other.
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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.
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The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended.
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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.
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Liberty is an acknowledgement of faith in God and his works.
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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.
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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
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