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The more opportunities there are in a Society for some persons to live upon the toil of others, and the less those others may enjoy the fruits of their work themselves, the more is diligence killed, the former become insolent, the latter despairing, and both negligent.

— Anders Chydenius

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More quotes by Anders Chydenius

The exercise of one coercion always makes another inevitable.

...Fatherland without freedom and merit is a large word with little meaning.

...that every individual spontaneously tries to find the place and the trade in which he can best increase National gain, if laws do not prevent him from doing so.

Our wants are various, and nobody has been found able to acquire even the necessaries without the aid of other people, and there is scarcely any Nation that has not stood in need of others. The Almighty himself has made our race such that we should help one another. Should this mutual aid be checked within or without the Nation, it is contrary to Nature.

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Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.

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The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both.

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It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.

Felix Frankfurter

It is not true that equality is a law of nature. nature has made nothing equal, her sovereign law is subordination and dependence.

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues Reflections and Maxims (1746)

Attribution

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