What needs explanation is not poverty, which is the natural state of mankind, but wealth. - Frédéric Bastiat

Ninguna sociedad puede existir, si no impera en algún grado el respeto a las leyes; pero es el caso que lo que da más seguridad para que sean respetadas las leyes, es que sean respetables. Cuando la ley y la moral se encuentran en contradicción, el ciudadano se encuentra en la cruel disyuntiva de perder la noción de lo moral o de perder el respeto a la ley, dos desgracias tan grandes una como la otra y entre las cuales es difícil elegir.

"The nature of law is to maintain justice. This is so much the case that, in the minds of the people, law and justice are one and the same thing. There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are "just" because law makes them so. Thus, in order to make plunder appear just and sacred to many consciences, it is only necessary for the law to decree and sanction it. Slavery, restrictions, and monopoly find defenders not only among those who profit from them but also among those who suffer from them."

The most urgent necessity is not that the State should teach, but that it should allow education. All monopolies are detestable, but the worst of all is the monopoly of education.