Frédéric Bastiat Quotes

La Ley se ha pervertido bajo la influencia de dos causas bien diferentes: el egoísmo falto de inteligencia y la falsa filantropía.

Each of us has a natural right – from God – to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties?

As classes espoliadas acabarão por entender como entrar no jogo político e espoliar seus semelhantes. A legislação jamais será guiada por quaisquer princípios de justiça, mas apenas pela força política bruta.

The politician attempts to remedy the evil by increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder.

The nature of law is to maintain justice. This is so much the case that, in the minds of the people, law and justice are one and the same thing. There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are 'just' because law makes them so. Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred to many consciences, it is only necessary for the law to decree and sanction it. Slavery, restrictions, and monopoly find defenders not only among those who profit from them but also among those who suffer from them.

the radical passiveness of mankind, — the omnipotence of the law, — the infallibility of the legislator: — this is the sacred symbol of the party which proclaims itself exclusively democratic.

Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

Todo el mundo quiere vivir a expensas del Estado, y se olvida de que el Estado vive a expensas de todo el mundo.

The strange phenomenon of our times — one which will probably astound our descendants — is the doctrine based on this triple hypothesis: the total inertness of mankind, the omnipotence of the law, and the infallibility of the legislator. These three ideas form the sacred symbol of those who proclaim themselves totally democratic.

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. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

Competition is merely the absence of oppression.

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

Money only appears for the sake of facilitating the arrangements between the parties.

It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder. What are the consequences of such a perversion? ... In the first place, it erases from everyone's conscience the distinction between justice and injustice...When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.

If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good?