Frederic Bastiat Quotes

I hate uneducated people having power …

A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.

The exclusive owners of property ever have been, ever will, and perhaps ever ought to be the virtual rulers of mankind

I do not wish to see men of culture asking to be entrusted with power

It is, indeed, a vice of rulers that men who have exceptional ability and worth are offensive to them

We must have kings, we must have nobles; nature is always providing such in every society; only let us have the real instead of the titular. In every society some are born to rule, and some to advise. The chief is the chief all the world over, only not his cap and plume. It is only this dislike of the pretender which makes men sometimes unjust to the true and finished man.

If an individual is born with the obligation to obey, who is born with the right to command?

What you're saying is that 'I, the superior elite, will take care of you.' Why? Because, you see, that superior, elite group needs to feel superior and elite. And they can't be superior and elite unless you have a whole lot of people down there groveling around. So you keep them down there by feeding them.

And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?

The most powerful men were those who most effectively used the power of adult competence to enforce childish agreements.

Language does not make one an elite.

What we really need to be understanding is that all of these things matter and they all stem from the fact that certain people live with power and authority and they want to maintain it.

I have a job I'm pretty good at. I am in charge of things. I am on committees. People respect me and take my counsel. I want to be strong and professional, but I resent how hard I have to work to be taken seriously, to receive a fraction of the consideration I might otherwise receive.

Those who are able to climb up the ladder will find ways to pull it up after them, or selectively lower it down to allow their friends, allies, and kin to scramble up. In other words: 'Who says meritocracy says oligarchy.'

The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.

When you're younger, you see the people who are in power and think they must have that position because of some degree of skill. And as you get older, you realize it's not true, that most people in those positions are absolutely inept. And this naturally makes you feel better about yourself.

I don't believe in social equality, and they know it.

Every man who repeats the dogma of Mill that one country is no fit to rule another country must admit that one class is not fit to rule another class.

Hierarchy is is much reviled in the present day.

Every society naturally divides itself into classes. The author of nature has bestowed on some greater capacities than on others--birth, education, talents and wealth, create distinctions among men as visible and of as much influence as titles, stars and garters. In every society, men of this class will command a superior degree of respect--and if the government is so constituted as to admit but few to exercise the powers of it, it will, according to the natural course of things, be in their hands.

Aristocracy is naturally abhorrent to me, and adored equality is my idol.

Elites quite naturally define as the most important and admired qualities for a citizen those on which they themselves have concentrated.

The majority in every society is always the backward. The diligent are no more than thirty percent of the society. It is a natural law that the diligent breed will exploit the backward breed as best they can, like the fish at sea, where the strong eat the weak. It is inconsequential whether the diligent are capitalists and merchants, as in the bourgeois government, or whether the diligent are the managers and supervisors, the intellectuals and the allotters as in the communist government. Ultimately, the diligent will exploit the laboring backward to the best of their ability.

Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being.

If there are no superior people to look after a population, the common people have no security.