Legal plunder has two roots: One of them, as I have said before, is in human greed; the other is in false philanthropy. - Frédéric Bastiat

In fact, if law were restricted to protecting all persons, all liberties, and all properties; if law were nothing more than the organized combination of the individual's right to self-defense; if law were the obstacle, the check, the punisher of all oppression and plunder — is it likely that we citizens would then argue much about the extent of the franchise?

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.

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