Frederic Bastiat Quotes

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

Live, Forget, Everyone

The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.
Frederic Bastiat

Great, Live, Else

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

Great, Government, Live

They will come to learn in the end, at their own expense, that it is better to endure competition for rich customers than to be invested with monopoly over impoverished customers.
Frederic Bastiat

End, Rich, Learn

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

God, Person, Liberty

Often the masses are plundered and do not know it.
Frederic Bastiat

Often, Masses, Plundered

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.
Frederic Bastiat

Life, Men, Made

Is not liberty the destruction of all despotism - including, of course, legal despotism?
Frederic Bastiat

Legal, Liberty, Despotism

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?
Frederic Bastiat

Education, Travel, Heart

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?
Frederic Bastiat

Law, Liberty, Individual

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?
Frederic Bastiat

Freedom, Long, Person

When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.
Frederic Bastiat

Soldiers, Cross, Goods

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Biography

Nationality: French

Type: Economist

Born: June 30, 1801

Died: December 24, 1850

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