Frederic Bastiat Quotes

The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.

When your response to everything that is wrong with the world is to say, 'there ought to be a law,' you are saying that you hold freedom very cheap.

Politics [is] the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.

The State is, and always has been, the great single enemy of the human race, its liberty, happiness, and progress.

The socialized state is to justice, order, and freedom what the Marquis de Sade is to love.

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?

Under the guise of protecting us from ourselves, the right and the left are becoming ever more aggressive in regulating behavior.

My libertarian friends are probably getting a little upset now but I think that's because they never appreciate the benefits of local fascism.

If you feel the government should leave you alone, you're a Republican. If you think the job of the government is to go push people around and take things for you, then you're a Democrat.

The savior who wants to turn men into angels is as much a hater of human nature as the totalitarian despot who wants to turn them into puppets.

If we Americans are too concerned about freedom and liberty, it is because we have read too much of John Locke and Adam Smith.

The old theory was, that the least possible should be left to the choice of the individual agent; that all he had to do should, as far as practicable, be laid down for him by superior wisdom. Left to himself he was sure to go wrong.

All men are free in a state of nature.

No government allows absolute liberty

The idea that an overweening federal government is a threat to both freedom and equality (not to mention prosperity) goes back to Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry and some other fairly respectable personages. You can disagree with them, or with Coolidge or Reagan or Friedrich Hayek or Milton Friedman or George Will, but to dismiss them as nothing more than mouthpieces of the wealthy and big business is to indulge in [a] sort of anti-intellectualism…

I'm a classical liberal. A free thinker.

What I want is a sort of new political realignment on libertarian/authoritarian lines, and I want a new consensus to emerge of disaffected liberals, classical liberals, dissident minorities like gays, small-state conservatives, libertarians, people who basically want to be left alone.

Some may try to argue that conservatism and libertarianism are contradictory perspectives. But I disagree.

By definition, the moment one crosses from center to left, one accepts more government control of people's lives. Therefore, the further left society moves, the more there is government control over its citizens' lives. It is astonishing that this obvious fact is not universally acknowledged and that the Left has somehow successfully portrayed itself as preoccupied with personal liberty.

A little government involvement is just as dangerous as a lot - because the first leads inevitably to the second.

You can't build politics on love. People aren't concerned with love; it's too disordered. They prefer despotism. Too much freedom breeds chaos.

The American people have worn out their patience being told by their so-called bettors that you don't know how to live your lives the right way. We need to arrange things for you so you can do things better than you would do yourself.

It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order.