Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [101-120] of 1389 Government quotesGovernment QuotesGovernment Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame and danger that their acts would otherwise involve... 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 the other persons to whom it doesn't 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. Then abolish that law without delay ... No legal plunder; this is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony and logic.~ Frederic Bastiat When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.~ Frederic Bastiat The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.~ Frederic Bastiat No legal plunder: This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony, and logic. Until the day of my death, I shall proclaim this principle with all the force of my lungs (which alas! is all too inadequate).~ Frederic Bastiat And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works.~ Frederic Bastiat 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.~ Frederic Bastiat Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone.~ Frederic Bastiat Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.~ Frédéric Bastiat The country's first drug ban explicitly targeted the opium of "the heathen Chinee." Cocaine was first banned in the south to prevent an uprising of hopped-up "cocainized Negroes.~ Dan Baum The [Supreme] Court during the past decade let police obtain search warrants on the strength of anonymous tips. It did away with the need for warrants when police want to search luggage, trash cans, car interiors, bus passengers, fenced private property and barns.~ Dan Baum Half the work that is done in this world is to make things appear what they are not.~ Elias Root Beadle Provided I do not write about the government, or about religion, or politics, or morals, or those in power, or public bodies, or the Opera, or the other state theatres, or about anybody who is active in anything, I can print whatever I want.~ Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais As long as I don't write about the government, religion, politics, and other institutions, I am free to print anything.~ Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais Government should allow persons to engage in whatever conduct they want to, no matter how deviant or abnormal it may be, so long as (a) they know what they are doing, (b) they consent to it, and (c) no one -- at least no one other than the participants -- is harmed by it.~ Hugo Adam Bedau The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.~ Rev. Henry Ward Beecher History is clear that the first ten amendments to the Constitution were adopted to secure certain common law rights of the people, against invasion by the Federal Government.~ Bell v. Hood Politics is the art of looking for trouble,finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy. ~ Ernest Benn As to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to measure it, for it is impossible to tell where it ends.~ Jeremy Bentham Among the several cloudy appellatives which have been commonly employed as cloaks for misgovernment, there is none more conspicuous in this atmosphere of illusion than the word Order.~ Jeremy Bentham No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion.~ Jeremy Bentham Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print