Quotes by Frederic Bastiat

• Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
• Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone.
• Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.
• 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.
• Often the masses are plundered and do not know it.
• The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.
• 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.
• When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.