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History See other History Articles Title: Frederic Bastiat quotes 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. 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. The state is the great fiction by which everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else. By virtue of exchange, one man's prosperity is beneficial to all others. No legal plunder: This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony, and logic. Until the day of my death, I shall proclaim this principle with all the force of my lungs (which alas! is all too inadequate). Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame and danger that their acts would otherwise involve... But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to the other persons to whom it doesn't belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish that law without delay ... No legal plunder; this is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony and logic. 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. There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are “just” because the law makes them so. Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone. This bears repeating several times; There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are “just” because the law makes them so. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: richard9151 (#0)
Excellent quote. Upon the 'internet(s)', I saw a sticker that read,
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