“The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable.” — Frédéric Bastiat Austrian-school-of-economics Copy Share Image
“I cannot possibly understand how fraternity can be legally enforced without liberty being legally destroyed...” — Frédéric Bastiat Fraternity Copy Share Image
Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. — Frederic Bastiat Fiction Copy Share Image
“...for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.” — Frédéric Bastiat Acknowledgment Copy Share Image
When, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor. — Frederic Bastiat Copy Share Image
It is easier to show the disorder that must accompany reform than the order that should follow it. — Frederic Bastiat Copy Share Image
Trade barriers constitute isolation; isolation gives rise to hatred, hatred to war, and war to invasion. — Frederic Bastiat Barriers Copy Share Image
The mind never fully accepts any convictions that it does not owe to its own efforts. — Frederic Bastiat Copy Share Image
“But yet he may live and enjoy, by seizing and appropriating the productions of the faculties of his fellow men. This is… — Frédéric Bastiat Copy Share Image
Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons and gendarmes… — Frederic Bastiat Crime Copy Share Image
When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his… — Frederic Bastiat Copy Share Image
“If you suggest a doubt as to the morality of these institutions, it is said directly—"You are a dangerous innovator, a utopian,… — Frédéric Bastiat Character Copy Share Image
“Is it to be supposed that Nature has not bestowed upon me sufficient imagination to invent a Utopia too? Is it for… — Frédéric Bastiat Nature Copy Share Image
“It would be impossible, therefore, to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this—the conversion of the law… — Frédéric Bastiat Change Copy Share Image
This question of legal plunder must be settled once and for all, and there are only three ways to settle it: (1)… — Frederic Bastiat Copy Share Image
“In fact, it is not justice which has an existence of its own, it is injustice. The one results from the absence… — Frédéric Bastiat Injustice Copy Share Image
In fact, if law were restricted to protecting all persons, all liberties, and all properties; if law were nothing more than the… — Frederic Bastiat Copy Share Image
But we assure the socialists that we repudiate only forced organization, not natural organization. We repudiate the forms of association that are… — Frederic Bastiat Copy Share Image
If you wish to prosper, let your customer prosper. When people have learned this lesson, everyone will seek his individual welfare in… — Frederic Bastiat Cities Copy Share Image
When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone… — Frederic Bastiat Copy Share Image
“When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it -- without his consent and without compensation, and whether… — Frédéric Bastiat Copy Share Image
“Yes, as long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true mission, that it may violate property… — Frédéric Bastiat Goals Copy Share Image
The law is the collective organization of the individual's right to lawful defense of his life, liberty and property. When it is… — Frederic Bastiat Anarchy Copy Share Image
We cannot doubt that self-interest is the mainspring of human nature. It must be clearly understood that this word is used here… — Frederic Bastiat Copy Share Image
“Which countries contain the most peaceful, the most moral, and the happiest people? Those people are found in the countries where the… — Frédéric Bastiat Character Copy Share Image
The mission of the law is not to oppress persons and plunder them of their property, even though the law may be… — Frederic Bastiat Acting Copy Share Image
Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of… — Frederic Bastiat Class Copy Share Image
“I do not think that illegal plunder, such as theft or swindling — which the penal code defines, anticipates, and punishes —… — Frédéric Bastiat Law Copy Share Image
All you have to do, is to see whether the law takes from some what belongs to them in order to give… — Frederic Bastiat Care Copy Share Image
“Life Is a Gift from God. We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life -- physical,… — Frederic Bastiat First place Copy Share Image
Slavery, protection, and monopoly find defenders, not only in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer by them. — Frederic Bastiat Defenders Copy Share Image
“In the first place, the word universal conceals a gross sophism.” — Frédéric Bastiat First place Copy Share Image
“The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.” — Frederic Bastiat Fiction Copy Share Image
“The law has been perverted through the influence of two very different causes—bare egotism and false philanthropy.” — Frédéric Bastiat Law Copy Share Image
The most urgent necessity is, not that the State should teach, but that it should allow education. All monopolies are detestable, but… — Frederic Bastiat Education Copy Share Image
“We must admit that our opponents in this argument have a marked advantage over us. They need only a few words to… — Frédéric Bastiat Argument Copy Share Image
“What, then, is law? As I have said elsewhere, it is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defence.” — Frédéric Bastiat Law Copy Share Image
Nothing is more senseless than to base so many expectations on the state, that is, to assume the existence of collective wisdom… — Frederic Bastiat Copy Share Image
“And because we do not ask so much at the hands of the law, because we only ask it for justice, it… — Frédéric Bastiat Justice Copy Share Image
In short, is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does… — Frederic Bastiat Copy Share Image
