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

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
Collective
Defense
Organization
Liberty
Law
Individual
Lawful
Government
Intriguing
Right
Collectives

More quotes by Frederic Bastiat

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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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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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Taking Five and Returning Four is not Giving
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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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It is easier to show the disorder that must accompany reform than the order that should follow it.
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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.
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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 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.
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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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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.
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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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We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life - physical, intellectual, and moral life.
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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
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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.
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Repetition may not entertain, but it teaches.
Frederic Bastiat
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The law commit legal plunder by violating liberty and property.
Frederic Bastiat
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The mind never fully accepts any convictions that it does not owe to its own efforts.
Frederic Bastiat
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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 try to force them to be self-sacrificing.
Frederic Bastiat
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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
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Liberty is an acknowledgement of faith in God and his works.
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