Frederic Bastiat Quotes About Liberty
-
There are people who think that plunder loses all its immorality as soon as it becomes legal. Personally, I cannot imagine a more alarming situation.
→ -
Liberty is an acknowledgement of faith in God and his works.
→ -
And what is liberty, whose very name makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world? Is it not the union of all liberties - liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of travel, or labor, or trade?
→ -
If every person has the right to defend - even by force - his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force - for the same reason - cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.
→ -
But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.
→ -
The law is the collective organization of the individual's right to lawful defense of his life, liberty and property. When it is used for anything else, no matter how noble the cause, it becomes perverted and justice is weakened. Thus, the law has become perverted by stupid greed and false philanthropy.
→ -
The solution of the social problem is in liberty.
→ -
And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works
→ -
The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.
→ -
The politician attempts to remedy the evil by increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder.
→ -
Property, the right to enjoy the fruits of one's labor, the right to work, to develop, to exercise one's faculties, according to one's own understanding, without the state intervening otherwise than by its protective action; this is what is meant by liberty
→ -
In short, is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does not harm other persons while doing so?
→ -
...the statement, "The purpose of the law is to cause justice to reign," is not a rigorously accurate statement. It ought to be stated that the purpose of the law is to prevent injustice from reigning. In fact, it is injustice, instead of justice, that has an existence of its own. Justice is achieved only when injustice is absent.
→ -
If philanthropy is not voluntary, it destroys liberty and justice. The law can give nothing that has not first been taken from its owner.
→ -
Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.
→ -
Try to imagine a system of labor imposed by force that is not a violation of liberty; a transfer of wealth imposed by force that is not a violation of property rights. If you cannot do so, then you must agree that the law cannot organize labor and industry without organizing injustice.
→ -
If you wish to prosper, let your customer prosper. When people have learned this lesson, everyone will seek his individual welfare in the general welfare. Then jealousies between man and man, city and city, province and province, nation and nation, will no longer trouble the world.
→ -
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? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?
→ -
What, then is law [government]? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.
→ -
We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.
→ -
Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism - including, of course, legal despotism?
→ -
It is easy to understand why the law is used by the legislator to destroy in varying degrees among the rest of the people, their personal independence by slavery, their liberty by oppression, and their property by plunder. This is done for the benefit of the person who makes the law, and in proportion to the power that he holds.
→ -
Law is justice. And it is under the law of justice - under the reign of right; under the influence of liberty, safety, stability, and responsibility - that every person will attain his real worth and the true dignity of his being. It is only under this law of justice that mankind will achieve - slowly, no doubt, but certainly - God's design for the orderly and peaceful progress of humanity.
→ -
By virtue of exchange, one man's prosperity is beneficial to all others.
→ -
Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
→ -
The plans differ; the planners are all alike.
→ -
It is not true that the legislator has absolute power over our persons and property, since they pre-exist, and his work is only to secure them from injury. It is not true that the mission of the law is to regulate our consciences, our ideas, our will, our education, our sentiments, our works, our exchanges, our gifts, our enjoyments. Its mission is to prevent the rights of one from interfering with those of another, in any one of these things.
→ -
Finally, is not liberty the restricting of the law only to its rational sphere of organizing the right of the individual to lawful self-defense; of punishing injustice?
→ -
The sort of dependence that results from exchange, i.e., from commercial transactions, is a reciprocal dependence. We cannot be dependent upon a foreigner without his being dependent on us. Now, this is what constitutes the very essence of society. To sever natural interrelations is not to make oneself independent, but to isolate oneself completely.
→ -
This question of legal plunder must be settled once and for all, and there are only three ways to settle it: (1) The few plunder the many. (2) Everybody plunders everybody. (3) Nobody plunders anybody.
→
Related Authors
-
Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune French statesman -
Jean-Baptiste Say Economist -
Adam Smith Philosopher -
Llewellyn Rockwell Author -
Thomas Woods Historian -
Murray Rothbard Economist -
Friedrich August von Hayek Economist -
Carl Menger Economist -
David Ricardo Economist -
Thomas Sowell Economist -
John Locke Philosopher -
Henry Hazlitt Journalist -
Thomas Malthus Scholar -
Milton Friedman Economist -
Gustave de Molinari Economist -
Ludwig von Mises Philosopher -
James M. Buchanan Economist -
Joseph A. Schumpeter Economist -
Ayn Rand Novelist