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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

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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
People
Inevitably
Falls
Burden
Beginning
Realize
Realizing
Fall
Apparatus
Government
Costly

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It is easier to show the disorder that must accompany reform than the order that should follow it.
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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.
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When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.
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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.
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They would be the shepherds over us, their sheep. Certainly such an arrangement presupposes that they are naturally superior to the rest of us. And certainly we are fully justified in demanding from the legislators and organizers proof of this natural superiority.
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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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The creation of new capital always... releases... labor. Its actual effect [though] is not to make jobs scarce, but to free men's labor for other jobs.
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Repetition may not entertain, but it teaches.
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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 impulses of my heart are the voice of Nature, which is never mistaken. The institutions that stand in my way are man-made and are only arbitrary conventions to which I have never given my consent. In trampling these institutions underfoot, I shall have the double pleasure of satisfying my inclinations and of believing myself a hero
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Often the masses are plundered and do not know it.
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The solution of the social problem is in liberty.
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The profit of the one is the profit of the other.
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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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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
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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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No legal plunder: This is the principle of justice.
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Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.
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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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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).
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