• Steve MarriottNeighbor

  • Mansfield-Storrs, CT

&#34;If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?&#34; <br>— Frédéric Bastiat (The Law)

&#34;Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don&#39;t you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough.&#34; — Frédéric Bastiat

&#34;Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.&#34; — Frédéric Bastiat

&#34;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.&#34; <br>— Frédéric Bastiat (The Law)

&#34;The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.&#34; — Frédéric Bastiat 

&#34;You say: &#34;There are persons who lack education&#34; and you turn to the law. But the law is not, in itself, a torch of learning which shines its light abroad. The law extends over a society where some persons have knowledge and others do not; where some citizens need to learn, and others can teach. In this matter of education, the law has only two alternatives: It can permit this transaction of teaching-and-learning to operate freely and without the use of force, or it can force human wills in this matter by taking from some of them enough to pay the teachers who are appointed by government to instruct others, without charge. But in the second case, the law commits legal plunder by violating liberty and property.&#34; — Frédéric Bastiat (The Law)

&#34;When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.&#34; <br>— Frédéric Bastiat 

&#34;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.&#34; <br>— Frédéric Bastiat (The Law) 

&#34;Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone.&#34; <br>— Frédéric Bastiat 

&#34;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 other persons to whom it does not 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.&#34; <br>— Frédéric Bastiat (The Law) 

&#34;Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.&#34; <br>— Frédéric Bastiat 

&#34;Life Is a Gift from God. <br>We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life -- physical, intellectual, and moral life. <br><br>But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course. <br><br>Life, faculties, production--in other words, individuality, liberty, property -- this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. <br><br>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.&#34; <br>— Frédéric Bastiat (The Law) 

&#34;The mission of law is not to oppress persons and plunder them of their property, even thought the law may be acting in a philanthropic spirit. Its mission is to protect property.&#34; <br>— Frédéric Bastiat (The Law)

&#34;It is not true that the legislator has absolute power over our persons and property. The existence of persons and property preceded the existence of the legislator, and his function is only to guarantee their safety.&#34; <br>— Frédéric Bastiat (The Law) 

&#34;As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose--that it may violate property instead of protecting it--then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder.&#34; <br>— Frédéric Bastiat (The Law) 

&#34;The social organs are constituted so as to enable them to develop harmoniously in the grand air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, and their chains, and their hooks, and their pincers! Away with their artificial methods! Away with their social laboratories, their governmental whims, their centralization, their tariffs, their universities, their State religions, their inflationary or monopolizing banks, their limitations, their restrictions, their moralizations, and their equalization by taxation! And now, after having vainly inflicted upon the social body so many systems, let them end where they ought to have begun — reject all systems, and try of liberty — liberty, which is an act of faith in God and in His work&#34; <br>— Frédéric Bastiat 

&#34;The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.&#34; <br>— Frédéric Bastiat 

&#34;Why don&#39;t you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough.&#34; <br>— Frédéric Bastiat<br><br>

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