![]() ![]() And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect. The law has gone further than this it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. And when it has exceeded its proper functions, it has not done so merely in some inconsequential and debatable matters. We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas. ![]() On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. But, unfortunately, law by no means confines itself to its proper functions. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force - for the same reason - cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individual groups. What, then, is the law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. They did not understand that knowledge appears and grows with the passage of time and that in proportion to this growth of knowledge, might takes the side of right, and society regains possession of itself. Uncritical and childish conformists, they took for granted the grandeur, dignity, morality, and happiness of the artificial societies of the ancient world. The writers quoted above were not in error when they found ancient institutions to be such, but they were in error when they offered them for the admiration and imitation of future generations. It proves only that since men and society are capable of improvement, it is naturally to be expected that error, ignorance, despotism, slavery, and superstition should be greatest towards the origins of history. But this does not prove that this situation is desirable. ![]() And antiquity presents everywhere - in Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome - the spectacle of a few men molding mankind according to their whims, thanks to the prestige of force and of fraud. These centuries were nourished on the study of antiquity. Actually, it is not strange that during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the human race was regarded as inert matter, ready to receive everything - form, face, energy, movement, life - from a great prince or a great legislator or a great genius. Mallery (1881-1956) in his 1943 book Economic Union and Durable Peace (he doesnt attribute it to Bastiat, although Bastiat has written similar ideas) Quotes about Bastiat.
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