Quote

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

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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
Many
Held
Believe
Belief
Things
Law
Strong
Erroneously
Makes
Lawful
Also
Widespread
Anything
Legitimate
Persons
Disposition

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The plans differ the planners are all alike.
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The solution of the social problem is in liberty.
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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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If goods don't cross borders, armies will.
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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.
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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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Repetition may not entertain, but it teaches.
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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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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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Property, the right to enjoy the fruits of one's labor, the right to work, to develop, to exercise one's faculties, according to one's own understanding, without the state intervening otherwise than by its protective action this is what is meant by liberty
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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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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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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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What, then is law [government]? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.
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Finally, is not liberty the restricting of the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right of the individual to lawful self-defense of punishing injustice?
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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 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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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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