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The law has been perverted through the influence of two very different causes—naked greed and misconceived philanthropy.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

it has placed the collective force in the service of those who wish to traffic, without risk and without scruple, in the persons, the liberty, and the property of others; it has converted plunder into a right, that it may protect it, and lawful defense into a crime, that it may punish it.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

Unhappily, law is by no means confined to its own sphere. … It has done more than this. It has acted in direct opposition to its proper end; it has destroyed its own object; it has been employed in annihilating that justice which it ought to have established.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

We should know it only by the inestimable blessing of Safety.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

It seems to me that such a people would have the most simple, the most economical, the least oppressive, the least to be felt, the most restrained, the most just, and, consequently, the most stable Government that could be imagined, whatever its political form might be.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

Nothing, therefore, can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense; it is the substitution of collective for individual forces, for the purpose of acting in the sphere in which they have a right to act, of doing what they have a right to do, to secure persons, liberties, and properties, and to maintain each in its right, so as to cause justice to reign over all.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

Collective right, then, has its principle, its reason for existing, its lawfulness, in individual right; and the common force cannot rationally have any other end, or any other mission, than that of the isolated forces for which it is substituted.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

For what are our faculties, but the extension of our personality? and what is property, but an extension of our faculties?
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

What, then, is law? As I have said elsewhere, it is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

It is not because men have made laws, that personality, liberty, and property exist. On the contrary, it is because personality, liberty, and property exist beforehand, that men make laws.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

It is of these three things that it may be said, apart from all demagogic subtlety, that they are anterior and superior to all human legislation.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

Existence, faculties, assimilation—in other words, personality, liberty, property—this is man.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

We hold from God the gift that, as far as we are concerned, contains all others, Life—physical, intellectual, and moral life.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

The law perverted! The law—and, in its wake, all the collective forces of the nation—the law, I say, not only diverted from its proper direction, but made to pursue one entirely contrary! The law become the tool of every kind of avarice, instead of being its check!
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

The law is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense… the substitution of a common force for individual forces… to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

Socialists look upon people as raw material to be formed into social combinations… the relationship between persons and the legislator appears to be the same as the relationship between the clay and the potter.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

We are suffering from the intolerable competition of a foreign rival… This rival, which is none other than the sun… We ask you to be good enough to pass a law which orders the closure of all windows…
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

Society loses the value of things which are uselessly destroyed… destruction is not profit.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

In the department of economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects… Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference—the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen and also of those which it is necessary to foresee.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

There are only three ways to settle [legal plunder]: 1. The few plunder the many. 2. Everybody plunders everybody. 3. Nobody plunders anybody. … limited plunder, universal plunder, and no plunder.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

Slavery is a violation, by law, of liberty. The protective tariff is a violation, by law, of property.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

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.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

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.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

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.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

Law is the measure of injustice.
— Frédéric Bastiat, The Law