Quote

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.

Frederic Bastiat

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Frederic Bastiat
Age: 49 †
Born: 1801
Born: June 30
Died: 1850
Died: December 24
Economist
Essayist
Magistrate
Philosopher
Politician
Baiona
Claude Frédéric Bastiat
Moral
Alternatives
Sense
Morality
Government
Losing
Citizens
Respect
Contradict
Liberty
Alternative
Either
Cruel
Law
Citizen

More quotes by Frederic Bastiat

Image
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
Image
Taking Five and Returning Four is not Giving
Frederic Bastiat
Image
It is easier to show the disorder that must accompany reform than the order that should follow it.
Frederic Bastiat
Image
The profit of the one is the profit of the other.
Frederic Bastiat
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The politician attempts to remedy the evil by increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder.
Frederic Bastiat
Image
Legal plunder has two roots: One, as we have just seen, is in human selfishness the other is in false philanthropy.
Frederic Bastiat
Image
Slavery, protection, and monopoly find defenders, not only in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer by them.
Frederic Bastiat
Image
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
Image
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.
Frederic Bastiat
Image
We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life - physical, intellectual, and moral life.
Frederic Bastiat
Image
Repetition may not entertain, but it teaches.
Frederic Bastiat
Image
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
Frederic Bastiat
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Frederic Bastiat
Image
The plans differ the planners are all alike.
Frederic Bastiat
Image
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.
Frederic Bastiat
Image
Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property.
Frederic Bastiat