Quotes from Frederic Bastiat

The creation of new capital always... releases... labor. Its actual effect [though] is not to make jobs scarce, but to free men's labor for other jobs.

Man acquires wealth in proportion as he puts his labor to better account.

When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

Often the masses are plundered and do not know it.

Liberty is an acknowledgement of faith in God and his works.

...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.

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

What, then is law [government]? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

Let us first of all frugality in government-peace and freedom we will have as a bonus.

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.

Countries which enjoy the highest level of peace, happiness and prosperity are the ones where the law least interfered with private affairs.

When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.

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.

Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.

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?

In war, the stronger overcomes the weaker. In business, the stronger imparts strength to the weaker.

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended.

When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.

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.

There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.

Slavery, protection, and monopoly find defenders, not only in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer by them.

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