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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?

— Frédéric Bastiat The Law (1850)

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Government

More quotes by Frédéric Bastiat

The State is the great fiction through which everyone endeavours to live at the expense of everyone else.

The State in Journal des débats (1848)

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

Economic Sophisms (1845)

This is done now; we desire that it be done better.

Justice and Fraternity (1848)

The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.

Do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?

The Law (1850)

All Frédéric Bastiat quotes →

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Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene (1589)

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

James Madison

Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.

Leon Trotsky The Revolution Betrayed (1936)

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

John Adams

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Frédéric Bastiat (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.