Quote

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.

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
Cannot
Existence
Substance
Expand
States
State
Independence
Spheres
Live
Lasts
Dignity
Tends
Nothing
Happiness
Private
Voting
Mean
Last
Limits
Limit
People
Freedom
Beyond
Enterprise
Vanish
Means
Wealth
Proportion
Woe
Action
Personal
Analysis
Sphere

More quotes by Frederic Bastiat

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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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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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Taking Five and Returning Four is not Giving
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Legal plunder has two roots: One, as we have just seen, is in human selfishness the other is in false philanthropy.
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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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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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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.
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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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Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property.
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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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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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The law commit legal plunder by violating liberty and property.
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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.
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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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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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The law is the collective organization of the individual's right to lawful defense of his life, liberty and property. When it is used for anything else, no matter how noble the cause, it becomes perverted and justice is weakened. Thus, the law has become perverted by stupid greed and false philanthropy.
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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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What, then is law [government]? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.
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It is easier to show the disorder that must accompany reform than the order that should follow it.
Frederic Bastiat
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Man acquires wealth in proportion as he puts his labor to better account.
Frederic Bastiat