Frédéric Bastiat Quotes

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 it and a moral code that glorifies it.

What is a law? he asked himself. It is a measure to which, when once promulgated, whether it is good or bad, everyone has to conform.

No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree, but the safest way to make them respected is to make them respectable. When the law and morality are in contradiction to each other, the citizen finds himself in the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense, or of losing his respect for the law — two evils of equal magnitude, between which it would be difficult to choose. It is so much in the nature of law to support justice that in the minds of the masses they are one and the same.

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! Away with their rings, and their chains, and their hooks, and their pincers! Away with their artificial methods! Away with their social laboratories, their governmental whims, their centralization, their tariffs, their universities, their State religions, their inflationary or monopolizing banks, their limitations, their restrictions, their moralizations, and their equalization by taxation! And now, after having vainly inflicted upon the social body so many systems, let them end where they ought to have begun — reject all systems, and try liberty — liberty, which is an act of faith in God and in His work.

Charmed with his discourse, delighted to learn that it is so easy to promote, by legislating, the prosperity of a people, the law-makers voted the restriction. “Talk of labor and economy,” they said, “what is the use of these painful means of increasing the national wealth, when all that is wanted for this object is a decree?

. . . for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.

The law has been perverted through the influence of two very different causes — bare egotism and false philanthropy.

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

Truly it would be well if these visionaries, who think so much of themselves and so little of mankind, who want to renew everything, would only be content with trying to reform themselves, the task would be arduous enough for them.

I cannot possibly understand how fraternity can be legally enforced without liberty being legally destroyed...

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?

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.

aquellos que quieren explotar, sin riesgo y sin escrúpulos, la Persona, la Libertad o la Propiedad de otros; ha convertido la Expoliación en Derecho, para protegerla, y la legítima defensa en crimen, para castigarla.

In general, however, these gentlemen, the reformers, legislators, and politicians, do not desire to exercise an immediate despotism over mankind. No, they are too moderate and too philanthropic for that. They only contend for the despotism, the absolutism, the omnipotence of the law.

The law has been perverted by the influence of two entirely different causes: stupid greed and false philanthropy. Let us speak of the first.