Frédéric Bastiat Quotes

And what is this liberty, whose very name makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world?

ha procedido en forma contraria a su propia finalidad; ha destruido su propia meta; se ha aplicado a aniquilar aquella justicia que debía hacer reinar, a anular, entre los derechos, aquellos límites que era su misión hacer respetar; ha puesto la fuerza colectiva al servicio de quienes quieran explotar, sin riesgo y sin escrúpulos, la persona, la libertad o la propiedad ajenas; ha convertido la expoliación, para protegerla, en derecho y la legítima defensa en crimen, para castigarla. ¿Cómo se ha llevado a cabo semejante perversión de la ley? ¿Cuáles son sus consecuencias?

The problem is, not to find whether the picture is mournful, but whether it is true. And for that we have the testimony of history.

If abnegation has indeed so many charms for you, why do you fail to practice it in private life? Society will be grateful to you, for someone, at least, will reap the fruit; but to desire to impose it upon mankind as a principle is the very height of absurdity, for the abnegation of all is the sacrifice of all, which is evil erected into a theory.

When an abuse has once taken root everything is arranged on the assumption of its continuance.

Existence, faculties, assimilation — in other words, personality, liberty, property — this is man.

Más aún, puede afirmarse que gracias a la no intervención del Estado en los asuntos privados, las necesidades y las satisfacciones se desarrollarían en el orden natural.

We hold from God the gift that, as far as we are concerned, contains all others, Life — physical, intellectual, and moral life.

Money serves only to facilitate the transmission of these useful things from one to another,

Poor human nature! What would become of a person's dignity if it were entrusted to the followers of Rousseau?

a man who has a head and hands is seldom left long in a state of destitution.

Imagine a state of affairs in which, for each man killed in action, two spring from the ground full of strength and energy. If there is a planet where such things happen, war, it must be admitted, is conducted there under conditions so different from those we see down here that it no longer deserves even to be called by the same name.

The separation of employments, the division of labor, which results from the faculty of exchanging, causes each man, instead of struggling on his own account to overcome all the obstacles that surround him, to combat only one of them; he overcomes that one not for himself but for his fellow men, who in turn render him the same service.

the public has two hopes, and Government makes two promises — many benefits and no taxes. Hopes and promises that, being contradictory, can never be realized.

They need only to give up the idea of forcing us to acquiesce to their groups and series, their socialized projects, their free- credit banks, their Graeco-Roman concept of morality, and their commercial regulations. I ask