Skip to content

Like a chemist, Napoleon considered all Europe to be material for his experiments. But in due course, this material reacted against him.

— Frédéric Bastiat

Another quote →

Topics

Science

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 →

You may also like

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions (1988)

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

Henri Poincaré Science and Hypothesis (1901)

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.