"In fact, if law were restricted to protecting all persons, all liberties, and all properties; if law were nothing more than the organized combination ...

Life, faculties, production-in other words, individuality, liberty, property-this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.
~ Frédéric Bastiat ~











Life, faculties, production-in other words, individuality, liberty, property-this is man. And in spi...
Show MoreMore Frédéric Bastiat quotes
". . . for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.
"Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, be...
"One of the strangest phenomena of our time, and one that will probably be a matter of astonishment to our decedents, is that doctrine which is founded...
"I do not think that illegal plunder, such as theft or swindling — which the penal code defines, anticipates, and punishes — can be called socialism. I...
"There is in all of us a strong disposition to regard what is lawful as legitimate, so much so that many falsely derive all justice from law. It is suf...
"The most urgent necessity is, not that the State should teach, but that it should allow education. All monopolies are detestable, but the worst of all...
"Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism - including, of course, legal despotism?
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes ...
"The profit of the one is the profit of the other.
"Which countries contain the most peaceful, the most moral, and the happiest people? Those people are found in the countries where the law least interf...
"There are two principles between which there can be no compromise—liberty and coercion.
"Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle als...
"Experience teaches effectually, but brutally. It makes us acquainted with all the effects of an action, by causing us to feel them; and we cannot fail...
"The social organs are constituted so as to enable them to develop harmoniously in the grand air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Aw...


