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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.
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
Acting
Oppress
Spirit
Philanthropic
Thought
Plunder
May
Mission
Persons
Missions
Even
Property
Protect
Law
More quotes by Frederic Bastiat
The plans differ the planners are all alike.
Frederic Bastiat
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?
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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.
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The mind never fully accepts any convictions that it does not owe to its own efforts.
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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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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
The solution of the social problem is in liberty.
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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.
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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
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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.
Frederic Bastiat
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
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
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
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
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
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
Often the masses are plundered and do not know 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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Slavery, protection, and monopoly find defenders, not only in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer by them.
Frederic Bastiat
No legal plunder: This is the principle of justice.
Frederic Bastiat
