Frederic Bastiat

“Law is organized Justice. Now”

— Frédéric Bastiat

Justice is achieved only when injustice is absent.

— Frederic Bastiat

Competition is merely the absence of oppression.

— Frederic Bastiat

If you wish to prosper, let your customer prosper.

— Frederic Bastiat

Often the masses are plundered and do not know it.

— Frederic Bastiat

The profit of the one is the profit of the other.

— Frederic Bastiat

It's always tempting to do good at someone else's expense

— Frederic Bastiat

When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.

— Frederic Bastiat

The mind never fully accepts any convictions that it does not owe to its own efforts.

— Frederic Bastiat

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

— Frederic Bastiat

It is easier to show the disorder that must accompany reform than the order that should follow it.

— Frederic Bastiat

“I cannot possibly understand how fraternity can be legally enforced without liberty being legally destroyed...”

— Frédéric Bastiat

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.

— Frederic Bastiat

“...for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.”

— Frédéric Bastiat

When, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor.

— Frederic Bastiat

“The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.”

— Frederic Bastiat

“To presume to have recourse to power and taxation, besides being oppressive and unjust, implies further, the injurious supposition that the organized…

— Frédéric Bastiat

Finally, is not liberty the restricting of the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right of the individual to…

— 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

Either fraternity is spontaneous, or it does not exist. To decree it is to annihilate it. The law can indeed force men…

— Frederic Bastiat

“Thus men, according to Bossuet, derive nothing from themselves; patriotism, wealth, inventions, husbandry, science—all come to them by the operation of the…

— Frédéric Bastiat

“How is it that the strange idea of making the law produce what it does not contain—prosperity, in a positive sense, wealth,…

— Frédéric Bastiat

“Legal plunder has two roots: one of them, as we have already seen, is in human egotism; the other is in false…

— Frédéric Bastiat

When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that…

— Frederic Bastiat

It is easy to understand why the law is used by the legislator to destroy in varying degrees among the rest of…

— Frederic Bastiat

“When it is a question of taxes, gentlemen, prove their usefulness by reasons with some foundation, but not with that lamentable assertion:…

— Frédéric Bastiat

Society is composed of men, and every man is a FREE agent. Since man is free, he can choose; since he can…

— Frederic Bastiat

“And let it not be said, as it continually is, that the law, in this sense, would be atheistic, individual, and heartless,…

— Frédéric Bastiat

The state tends to expand in proportion to its means of existence and to live beyond its means, and these are, in…

— Frederic Bastiat

If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is…

— Frederic Bastiat

“It is not because men have made laws, that personality, liberty, and property exist. On the contrary, it is because personality, liberty,…

— Frédéric Bastiat

“One of the strangest phenomena of our time, and one that will probably be a matter of astonishment to our decedents, is…

— Frédéric Bastiat

“Which countries contain the most peaceful, the most moral, and the happiest people? Those people are found in the countries where the…

— Frédéric Bastiat

The mission of the law is not to oppress persons and plunder them of their property, even though the law may be…

— Frederic Bastiat

Legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways; hence, there are an infinite number of plans for organizing it:…

— Frederic Bastiat

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

— Frederic Bastiat

Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain - and since labor is pain in itself - it follows that men…

— Frederic Bastiat

“Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame and danger that their acts would…

— Frédéric Bastiat

“Life Is a Gift from God. We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life -- physical,…

— Frederic Bastiat

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

— Frederic Bastiat