Giving Quotes by Frederic Bastiat

9 Giving quotes by Frederic Bastiat

All Giving quotes Frederic Bastiat’s page

Frederic Bastiat’s eight brief quotes on giving distill his economic insight into clear, pointed lines. The collection is modest, yet each piece offers a crisp, rational view of generosity.

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Taking Five and Returning Four is not Giving

Frederic Bastiat

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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…

Frederic Bastiat

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If philanthropy is not voluntary, it destroys liberty and justice. The law can give nothing that has not first been taken from…

Frederic Bastiat

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Trade barriers constitute isolation; isolation gives rise to hatred, hatred to war, and war to invasion.

Frederic Bastiat

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But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to…

Frederic Bastiat

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All you have to do, is to see whether the law takes from some what belongs to them in order to give…

Frederic Bastiat

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You compare the nation to a parched piece of land and the tax to a life-giving rain. So be it. But you…

Frederic Bastiat

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In an economy, an act, a habit, an institution, or a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a…

Frederic Bastiat

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Thus, if there exists a law which sanctions slavery or monopoly, oppression or robbery, in any form whatever, it must not even…

Frederic Bastiat

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More by Frederic Bastiat

The politician attempts to remedy the evil by increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder.

Frederic Bastiat

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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…

Frederic Bastiat

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If every person has the right to defend - even by force - his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that…

Frederic Bastiat

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Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons and gendarmes at the…

Frederic Bastiat

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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.

Frederic Bastiat

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Often the masses are plundered and do not know it.

Frederic Bastiat

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Here I encounter the most popular fallacy of our times. It is not considered sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the…

Frederic Bastiat

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The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.

Frederic Bastiat

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There is in all of a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons…

Frederic Bastiat

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I believe that my theory is correct; for whatever be the question upon which I am arguing, whether it be religious, philosophical, political, or…

Frederic Bastiat

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The balance of trade is an article of faith.

Frederic Bastiat

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There are people who think that plunder loses all its immorality as soon as it becomes legal. Personally, I cannot imagine a more alarming…

Frederic Bastiat

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“And now, after having vainly inflicted upon the social body so many systems, let them end where they ought to have begun—reject all systems,…

Frédéric Bastiat

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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…

Frederic Bastiat

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There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good…

Frederic Bastiat

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