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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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Frederic Bastiat
Age: 49 †
Born: 1801
Born: June 30
Died: 1850
Died: December 24
Economist
Essayist
Magistrate
Philosopher
Politician
Baiona
Claude Frédéric Bastiat
Law
Introduce
Greater
Conversion
Society
Introducing
Evil
Instrument
Political
Instruments
Change
Liberty
Government
Impossible
Politics
Plunder

More quotes by Frederic Bastiat

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No legal plunder: This is the principle of justice.
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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.
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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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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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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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If goods don't cross borders, armies will.
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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 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.
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Taking Five and Returning Four is not Giving
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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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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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The creation of new capital always... releases... labor. Its actual effect [though] is not to make jobs scarce, but to free men's labor for other jobs.
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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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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
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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.
Frederic Bastiat
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Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property.
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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 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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Repetition may not entertain, but it teaches.
Frederic Bastiat