Frédéric Bastiat Quotes

Vote 50 million, more or less, for making ports and roads in Algeria; for sending emigrants there; for building houses and breaking up land. By so doing, you will relieve the French workman, encourage African labor, and give a stimulus to the commerce of Marseilles. It would be profitable every way.” Yes, it is all very true, if you take no account of the fifty million until the moment when the State begins to spend them; if you only see where they go, and not where they come from; if you look only at the good they are to do when they come out of the tax-gatherer’s bag, and not at the harm which has been done, and the good that has been prevented, by putting them into it.

no one borrows money for the sake of the money itself; money is only the medium by which to obtain possession of products.

"You say, "Here are men who are wanting in morality or religion," and you apply to the law; but law is force, and need I say how far it is a violent and absurd enterprise to introduce force in these matters?"

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 make trial of liberty — of liberty, which is an act of faith in God and in His work.

When two workmen run after one master, wages fall; they rise when two masters run after one workman.

Para empezar, la palabra universal oculta un sofisma grosero. Hay en Francia treinta seis millones de habitantes. Para que el derecho de sufragio fuera universal, tendría que serle reconocido a treinta y seis millones de electores. En el sistema más amplio, no se le reconoce sino a nueve millones. Luego, quedan excluidas tres de cada cuatro personas, y lo que es más importante, quien excluye a los otros es la cuarta persona. ¿Sobre qué principio se funda tal exclusión?

On a wrong road, inconsistency is inevitable; if it were not so, mankind would be sacrificed. A false principle never has been, and never will be, carried out to the end.

monopoly, like every other system of injustice, carries in itself its own punishment.

Advise me, but do not force your opinion on me. I shall decide at my peril and risk; that is enough and for the law to interfere would be tyranny.

if I have joined the ranks of the reformers, it is solely for the purpose of persuading them to leave people alone. I do not look upon people as Vancauson looked upon his automaton. Rather, just as the physiologist accepts the human body as it is, so do I accept people as they are. I desire only to study and admire.

It is in the nature of men to rise against the injustice of which they are the victims. When, therefore, plunder is organized by law, for the profit of those who perpetrate it, all the plundered classes tend, either by peaceful or revolutionary means, to enter in some way into the manufacturing of laws. These classes, according to the degree of enlightenment at which they have arrived, may propose to themselves two very different ends, when they thus attempt the attainment of their political rights; either they may wish to put an end to lawful plunder, or they may desire to take part in it.

Woe to the nation where this latter thought prevails amongst the masses, at the moment when they, in their turn, seize upon the legislative power!

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

need not involve an actual dictator. All that was needed, said Bastiat, was “the laws,” enacted by a Congress or a Parliament, that would achieve the same effect: forced conformity.

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

Está en la naturaleza de los hombres el reaccionar contra la iniquidad de la que son víctimas. De modo que cuando la Expoliación está organizada por la Ley, en beneficio de las clases que la dictan, todas las clases expoliadas tienden, por vías pacíficas o por vías revolucionarias, a intervenir por algún medio en la confección de las Leyes. Tales clases, según el grado de ilustración a que hayan llegado, pueden proponerse dos objetivos bien diferentes cuando persiguen así la conquista de sus derechos políticos: o quieren hacer cesar la expoliación legal, o aspiran a tomar parte en ella.