Notable Quotes: Frederic Bastiat

by Steve MacDonald

Bastiat, Frederic Bastiat[There] “is this idea that mankind is merely inert matter, receiving life, organization, morality, and prosperity from the power of the state.  And even worse, it will be stated that mankind tends toward degeneration, and is stopped from this downward course only by the mysterious hand of the legislator.

-Frédéric Bastiat

For Barack ‘You Didn’t Build That’ Obama and Elizabeth Warren – and just about every Democrat…

“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. 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.”

more…?

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

“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.”

“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?”

Author

  • Steve MacDonald

    Steve is a long-time New Hampshire resident, award-winning blogger, and a member of the Board of Directors of The 603 Alliance. He is the owner of Grok Media LLC and the Managing Editor, Executive Editor, assistant editor, Editor, content curator, complaint department, Op-ed editor, gatekeeper (most likely to miss typos because he has no editor), and contributor at GraniteGrok.com. Steve is also a former board member of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, The Republican Volunteer Coalition, has worked for or with many state and local campaigns and grassroots groups, and is a past contributor to the Franklin Center for Public Policy.

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