Frédéric Bastiat Quotes

the common force cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, the liberty, or the property of individuals or of classes.

Competition is merely the absence of oppression.

But when James Goodfellow hands over a hundred sous to a government official to receive no service for it or even to be subjected to inconveniences, it is as if he were to give his money to a thief.

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

Chateaubriand said of history: There are two consequences in history: one immediate and instantaneously recognized; the other distant and unperceived at first. These consequences often contradict each other; the former come from our short-run wisdom, the latter from long-run wisdom.

I wish someone would offer a prize — not of a hundred francs, but of a million, with crowns, medals and ribbons — for a good, simple and intelligible definition of the word “Government.” What an immense service it would confer on society!

We cannot wonder enough at the facility with which men resign themselves to continue ignorant of what it is most important that they should know; and we may be certain that such ignorance is incorrigible in those who venture to proclaim this axiom: There are no absolute principles.

Law is organized Justice.

The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.

The system of protection and the colonial system are, then, only two aspects of one and the same theory. To hinder our fellow-citizens from buying from foreigners, and to force foreigners to buy from our fellow-citizens, are only two consequences of one and the same principle.

We disapprove of state education. Than the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Than the socialists say that we don't want an religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Than they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.

Man does not live upon nominal values, but upon real products, and the more products there are, whatever be their price, the richer he is.

As soon as the injured classes have recovered their political rights, their first thought is not to abolish plunder (this would suppose them to possess enlightenment, which they cannot have), but to organize against the other classes, and to their own detriment, a system of reprisals — as if it was necessary, before the reign of justice arrives, that all should undergo a cruel retribution — some for their iniquity and some for their ignorance.

Despoilers obey the Malthusian law; they multiply with the means of existence, and the means of existence of knaves is the credulity of their dupes.

"In our plan, the state has only to pass labor laws (nothing else?) by means of which industrial progress can and must proceed in complete liberty. The state merely places society on an incline (that is all?). Then society will slide down this incline by the mere force of things, and by the natural workings of the established mechanism." But what is this incline that is indicated by Mr. Louis Blanc? Does it not lead to an abyss? (No, it leads to happiness.) If this is true, then why does not society go there of its own choice? (Because society does not know what it wants; it must be propelled.) What is to propel it? (Power.) And who is to supply the impulse for this power? (Why, the inventor of the machine — in this instance, Mr. Louis Blanc.)