"You compare the nation to a parched piece……" — Frederic Bastiat
"You compare the nation to a parched piece of land and the tax to a life-giving rain. So be it. But you should also ask yourself where this rain comes from, and whether it is not precisely the tax that draws the moisture from the soil and dries it up. You should also ask yourself further whether the soil receives more of this precious water from the rain than it loses by the evaporation?"
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Frederic Bastiat
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86 Quotes by Frederic Bastiat
Frederic Bastiat has 86 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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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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