Frédéric Bastiat Quotes

Se su di un confine non passano le merci, vi passeranno i cannoni.

Indeed, a more astounding fact, in the heart of society, cannot be conceived than this: That law should have become an instrument of injustice.

If, then, it is politic to protect national Labor against the competition of foreign Labor, it is not less so to protect human Labor against the rivalry of mechanical Labor.

Governments assuming gigantic proportions end by absorbing half of all the revenues. The people are astonished that while marvelous labor-saving inventions, destined to infinitely multiply productions, are ever increasing in number, they are obliged to toil on as painfully as ever, and remain as poor as before.

In private transactions each individual remains the judge both of the service he renders and of that which he receives. He can always decline an exchange, or negotiate elsewhere. There is no necessity of an interchange of services, except by previous voluntary agreement. Such is not the case with the State, especially before the establishment of representative government. Whether or not we require its services, whether they are good or bad, we are obliged to accept such as are offered and to pay the price. It is

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?

When a portion of wealth passes out of the hands of him who has acquired it, without his consent, and without compensation, to him who has not created it, whether by force or by artifice, I say that property is violated, that plunder is perpetrated.

According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it. Woe to the nation when this latter purpose prevails

The true and equitable law of humanity is the free exchange of service for service. Spoliation consists in destroying by force or by trickery the freedom of exchange, in order to receive a service without rendering one. Forcible spoliation is exercised thus: Wait till a man has produced something; then take it away from him by violence. It is solemnly condemned in the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not steal.

legislators have almost always been ignorant of the object of society, which is to unite families by a common interest.

the price of labor, like the price of everything else, is governed by the relation of supply to demand.

Try to imagine a form of labor imposed by force, that is not a violation of liberty; a transmission of wealth imposed by force, that is not a violation of property. If you cannot succeed in reconciling this, you are bound to conclude that the law cannot organize labor and industry without organizing injustice.

There is no doubt that two nations, the same as two men, unconnected with each other, may, by working more, and working better, prosper at the same time, without injuring each other.

The oppressor no longer acts directly and with his own powers upon his victim. No, our discretion has become too refined for that. The tyrant and his victim are still present, but there is an intermediate person between them, which is the Government — that is, the Law itself.

When 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.