Quotes About Bastiat

As Bastiat understood, a very low rate of interest may benefit the rich, who have access to credit, more than the poor.

The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.

The existence of persons and property preceded the existence of the legislator, and his function is only to guarantee their safety.

In fact, it is impossible for me to separate the word fraternity from the word voluntary. I cannot possibly understand how fraternity can be legally enforced without liberty being legally destroyed, and thus justice being legally trampled underfoot.

In the first place, the word universal conceals a gross sophism.

Your doctrine is only the half of my program; you have stopped at liberty, I go on to fraternity." I answered him: "The second part of your program will destroy the first." And in fact it is impossible for me to separate the word fraternity from the word voluntary.

Mr. de Lamartine once wrote to me thusly: "Your doctrine is only the half of my program. You have stopped at liberty; I go on to fraternity." I answered him: "The second half of your program will destroy the first.

At all events, let no one claim that because an abuse cannot be done away with, without inconvenience to those who profit by it, what has been suffered to exist for a time should be allowed to exist forever.

The problem is, not to find whether the picture is mournful, but whether it is true. And for that we have the testimony of history.

What needs explanation is not poverty, which is the natural state of mankind, but wealth.

As Frederic Bastiat put it, "The State is the great fictitious entity by which everyone expects to live at the expense of everyone else."[8]