Law Quote by Frédéric Bastiat

““What, then, is law? As I have said elsewhere, it is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defence.””

Frédéric Bastiat

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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.

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 a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual,…

Frederic Bastiat

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 free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual and moral self-improvement. Instead, it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education, and morality throughout the nation. This is the seductive lure of…

Frederic Bastiat

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 economical; whether it affects well-being, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, property, labor, exchange, capital, wages, taxes, population, credit, or Government; at whatever point of the scientific horizon I start from, I invariably come to the…

Frederic Bastiat

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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It's easier to change a law than an age-old mentality. Deep down, many prejudices, many hostilities, many fears persist. But if we take a…

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The law is like apparel, which alters with the time

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I am convinced that we will never build a democratic state based on rule of law if we do not at the same time…

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It must be assumed and established as a principle, that the right of private property must be regarded as sacred. Wherefore, the law ought to favor this right and, so far as it can, see that the largest possible number among the masses of the population prefer to own property… But if the productive activity of the multitude can be…

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Dictatorship is rule based directly upon force and unrestricted by any laws. The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and maintained by…

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Maybe law enforcement would like the ability to turn on the camera on your Mac.

Tim Cook

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Next came the Patent laws. These began in England in 1624; and, in this country, with the adoption of our constitution. Before then [these?], any man might instantly use what another had invented; so that the inventor had no special advantage from his own invention. The patent system changed this; secured to the inventor, for a limited time, the exclusive…

Abraham Lincoln

Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.

Anonymous

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A man has a right to use a saw, an axe, a plane, separately; may he not combine their uses on the same piece of wood? He has a right to use his knife to cut his meat, a fork to hold it; may a patentee take from him the right to combine their use on the same subject? Such…

Thomas Jefferson

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