Notable Quote: Frederic Bastiat - "Government Is..." - Granite Grok

Notable Quote: Frederic Bastiat – “Government Is…”

Bastiat, Frederic Bastiat

 

“Government is that great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”

 

I’ve added some additional quotes that lead up to this definition…

“Man recoils from trouble–from suffering; and yet he is condemned by nature to suffering of privation, if he does not take the trouble to work.  He has to choose then between these two evils.  What means can he adopt to avoid both?  There remains now, and there will remain, only one way, which is, to enjoy the labor of others.  Such a course of conduct prevents the trouble and the enjoyment from assuming their natural proportion, and causes all the trouble to become the lot of a set of persons, and the enjoyment that of another.

and…

What can be better calculated to silence our scruples, and, which is perhaps better appreciated, to overcome all resistance?  We all, therefore, put in our claim under some pretext or other, and apply to Government.  We say to it, I am dissatisfied at the proportion between my labor and my enjoyments.  I should like, for the sake of restoring the desired equilibrium, to take a part of the possession of others.  But this would be dangerous.  Could not you facilitate the thing for me?  Could you not find me a good place?  or check the industry of my competitors? or, perhaps, lend me gratuitously some capital, which you may take from its possessor?  Could you not bring up my children at the public expense? or grant me some subsidies? or secure me a pension?  By this means I shall gain my end with an easy conscience, for the law will have acted for me, and I shall have all the advantages of plunder, without the risk or its disgrace!

>