The state is the great fiction by which everybody tries to live at the expense of everybody else.
More Quotes from Claude Frédéric Bastiat:
It is easier to show the disorder that must accompany reform than the order that should follow it.Claude Frédéric Bastiat
When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from this struggle Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating.
Claude Frédéric Bastiat
The harmlessness of the mission performed by law and lawful defense is self-evident the usefulness is obvious and the legitimacy cannot be disputed.
Claude Frédéric Bastiat
We cannot but be astonished at the ease with which men resign themselves to ignorance about what is most important for them to know and we may be certain that they are determined to remain invincibly ignorant if they once come to consider it as axiomatic that there are no absolute principles.
Claude Frédéric Bastiat
Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain and since labor is pain in itself it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions, neither religion nor morality can stop it. When, then, does plunder stop It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor. It is evident, then, that the proper purpose of law is to use the power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency to plunder instead of to work. All the measures of the law should protect property and punish plunder.
Claude Frédéric Bastiat
The sort of dependence that results from exchange, i.e., from commercial transactions, is a reciprocal dependence. We cannot be dependent upon a foreigner without his being dependent on us. Now, this is what constitutes the very essence of society. To sever natural interrelations is not to make oneself independent, but to isolate oneself completely.
Claude Frédéric Bastiat
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A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.
Norman Mailer
We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.
Maya Angelou