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Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is 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
Property
Laws
Exist
Law
Doe

More quotes by Frederic Bastiat

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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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The mind never fully accepts any convictions that it does not owe to its own efforts.
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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 solution of the social problem is in liberty.
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Repetition may not entertain, but it teaches.
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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.
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The profit of the one is the profit of the other.
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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 law commit legal plunder by violating liberty and property.
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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 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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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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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.
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Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?
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Liberty is an acknowledgement of faith in God and his works.
Frederic Bastiat
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Man acquires wealth in proportion as he puts his labor to better account.
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Taking Five and Returning Four is not Giving
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It is easy to understand why the law is used by the legislator to destroy in varying degrees among the rest of the people, their personal independence by slavery, their liberty by oppression, and their property by plunder. This is done for the benefit of the person who makes the law, and in proportion to the power that he holds.
Frederic Bastiat
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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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There are people who think that plunder loses all its immorality as soon as it becomes legal. Personally, I cannot imagine a more alarming situation.
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