Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
Frederic Bastiat
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Men
System
Plunder
Life
Create
Glorify
Moral
Monetary
Society
Legal
Money
Code
Political
Creating
Authorizes
Government
Becoming
Glorifies
Way
Becomes
Niceties
More quotes by Frederic Bastiat
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
If goods don't cross borders, armies will.
Frederic Bastiat
The law commit legal plunder by violating liberty and property.
Frederic Bastiat
Slavery, protection, and monopoly find defenders, not only in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer by them.
Frederic Bastiat
We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life - physical, intellectual, and moral life.
Frederic Bastiat
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
The plans differ the planners are all alike.
Frederic Bastiat
The profit of the one is the profit of the other.
Frederic Bastiat
What, then is law [government]? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.
Frederic Bastiat
It is easier to show the disorder that must accompany reform than the order that should follow it.
Frederic Bastiat
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.
Frederic Bastiat
Property does not exist because there are laws, but laws exist because there is property.
Frederic Bastiat
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.
Frederic Bastiat
Repetition may not entertain, but it teaches.
Frederic Bastiat
When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.
Frederic Bastiat
Often the masses are plundered and do not know it.
Frederic Bastiat
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
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?
Frederic Bastiat
No legal plunder: This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony, and logic. Until the day of my death, I shall proclaim this principle with all the force of my lungs (which alas! is all too inadequate).
Frederic Bastiat
The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended.
Frederic Bastiat