Quotes from Frederick Bastiat

Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone.

Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough.

The state is the great fiction by which everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else.

Law and Charity Are Not the Same

It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.

We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life -- physical, intellectual, and moral life.

when plunder is abetted by the law, it does not fear your courts, your gendarmes, and your prisons. Rather, it may call upon them for help.

You say There are persons who have no money, and you turn to the law. But the law is not a breast that fills itself with milk.

men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work.

But there is also another tendency that is common among people. When they can, they wish to live and prosper at the expense of others.