Frederic Bastiat Quotes

"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

"Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim - when he defends himself - as a criminal."
-Frederic Bastiat

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

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

"Taxes must, in the end, fall upon the consumer."
-Frederic Bastiat

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

"The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended."
-Frederic Bastiat