"We cannot doubt that self-interest is the mainspring……" — Frederic Bastiat
"We cannot doubt that self-interest is the mainspring of human nature. It must be clearly understood that this word is used here to designate a universal, incontestable fact, resulting from the nature of man, and not an adverse judgment, as would be the word selfishness."
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Frederic Bastiat
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86 Quotes by Frederic Bastiat
Frederic Bastiat has 86 quotes on this site.
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Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the…
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Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that…
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Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
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The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.
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Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.
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They will come to learn in the end, at their own expense, that it is better to endure competition for…
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Often the masses are plundered and do not know it.
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In short, is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as…
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When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.
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Finally, is not liberty the restricting of the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right of the…
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What, then is law [government]? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.
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Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons…
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More Adverse Quotes
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