Frederic Bastiat
Frederic Bastiat
Claude-Frédéric Bastiatwas a French economist and author who was a prominent member of the French Liberal School. He developed the economic concept of opportunity cost, and introduced the Parable of the Broken Window. He was also a Freemason, and member of the French National Assembly...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionEconomist
Date of Birth30 June 1801
CountryFrance
liberty destruction despotism
Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism - including, of course, legal despotism?
law two greed
The law has been perverted through the influence of two very different causes-naked greed and misconceived philanthropy.
government political liberty
The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.
liberty want libertarian
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.
taken law justice
If philanthropy is not voluntary, it destroys liberty and justice. The law can give nothing that has not first been taken from its owner.
liberty causes worst
The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended.
political honor progress
When misguided public opinion honors what is despicable and despises what is honorable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is useful, applauds falsehood and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns its back on progress and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe.
monopoly should states
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.
government second-amendment liberty
Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone.
mean people desire
If socialists mean that under extraordinary circumstances, for urgent cases, the State should set aside some resources to assist certain unfortunate people, to help them adjust to changing conditions, we will, of course, agree. This is done now; we desire that it be done better. There is however, a point on this road that must not be passed; it is the point where governmental foresight would step in to replace individual foresight and thus destroy it.
mean men law
Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter, by peaceful or revolutionary means, into the making of laws. 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.
law judging police
Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim - when he defends himself - as a criminal.
men law liberty
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.
spring government ideas
Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all . . . . 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