It is not because men have made laws that personality, liberty, and property exist. On the contrary, it is because personality, liberty, and property… - Frédéric Bastiat
" "It is not because men have made laws that personality, liberty, and property exist. On the contrary, it is because personality, liberty, and property exist beforehand, that men make laws.
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About Frédéric Bastiat
Frédéric Bastiat (30 June 1801 – 24 December 1850) was an early free-market economist and classical liberal French author.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Claude Frédéric Bastiat
•
Frederic Bastiat
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Additional quotes by Frédéric Bastiat
The law has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense.
Experience teaches effectually, but brutally. It makes us acquainted with all the effects of an action, by causing us to feel them; and we cannot fail to finish by knowing that fire burns, if we have burned ourselves. For this rough teacher, I should like, if possible, to substitute a more gentle one. I mean Foresight. For this purpose I shall examine the consequences of certain economical phenomena, by placing in opposition to each other those which are seen, and those which are not seen.
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.
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