Frederic Bastiat: "Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain."
Economic Harmonies: An English translation of Bastiat's longest and best known work Economic Harmonies.
Economic Sophisms: An English translation of Bastiat’s series of short essays in which he tries to correct common misunderstandings about the free market.
A Life in Letters: "I want the government to be limited to its essential functions, which are to guarantee the security of people and property, to prevent and repress violence and disorder, to ensure for all the free exercise of their faculties and the proper reward for their efforts"
Bastiat the Revolutionary: Part 1: "Here is the spirit in which I will support the Republic with wholehearted devotion: War waged against all forms of abuse: a people bound by the ties of privilege, bureaucracy, and taxes is like a tree eaten away by parasite plants. Protection for all rights: those of conscience like those of intelligence; those of ownership like those of work; those of the family like those of the commune; those of the fatherland like those of humanity. I have no ideal other than universal justice; no motto other than that on our national flag, liberty, equality, fraternity."
Bastiat the Revolutionary: Part 2: "I am throwing myself into public debate; I am trying to get through to the crowd to preach all the freedoms, the total of which make up liberty."
The State: "The state is the great fiction by which everyone endeavors to live at the expense of everyone else... This is illusionary, absurd, puerile, contradictory, and dangerous."
Property and Plunder: Fifth Letter: "It is not property that is responsible for the distressing inequality that can still be seen around the world; it is its opposing principle, plunder."
The Law: "It is not because men have enacted Laws that personality, freedom, and property exist. On the contrary, it is because personality, freedom, and property are already in existence that men enact laws."
The Petition of the Manufacturers of Candles: "We are suffering from the intolerable competition of a foreign rival whose production of light, it appears, is so far superior to ours that it is flooding our national market at a price that is astonishingly low."
The Broken Window: "If it is a good thing to break windows, that this causes money to circulate & therefore industry in general is stimulated, I am obliged to cry: "Stop!" Your theory has stopped at what is seen and takes no account of what is not seen."
The Utopian: I will therefore promulgate a law on Customs Duties." "In two folio volumes?" "No, in two articles."
