„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?“
Claude Frédéric BastiatClaude Frédéric Bastiat questions the true motives of lawmakers and the meaning of freedom – a timeless quote about power and humanity.
Claude Frédéric Bastiat was a 19th-century French economist, jurist, and writer known for his liberal economic ideas.
This quote urges us to critically question the integrity and motives of those in power, reminding us that lawmakers are also human and not inherently better by nature.
Translation or original: 🇩🇪Click here
Quelle: Hier klicken
i
3.0
/ 5
👥 Community:
Share this entry
Copyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork"In fact, the libertarian would reason that the fact that human nature is a mixture of both good and evil provides its own particular argument in his favor. For if man is such a mixture, then the best societal framework is surely one in which evil is discouraged and the good encouraged. The libertarian maintains that the existence of the State apparatus provides a ready, swift channel for the exercise of evil, since the rulers of the State are thereby legitimated and can wield compulsion in ways that no one else is permitted to do."
Murray Rothbard
Copyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork"Until you could make out practically that great work, a combination of opposing forces, "a work of labour long, and endless praise," the utmost caution ought to have been used in the reduction of the royal power, which alone was capable of holding together the comparatively heterogeneous mass of your states. But at this day, all these considerations are unreasonable. To what end should we discuss the limitations of royal power? Your king is in prison. Why speculate on the measure and standard of liberty? I doubt much, very much indeed, whether France is at all ripe for liberty on any standard. Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, — in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, — in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, — in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."
Edmund Burke
Copyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods."
Henry Louis Mencken
Copyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork"The true purpose of man, not that which is dictated by changing inclinations, but that which is dictated by eternal and unchanging reason, is the highest and most proportionate development of his powers into a whole. Freedom is the first and indispensable condition for this development. (...) It is precisely the diversity that arises from the union of many that is the highest good that society offers, and this diversity is certainly always lost to the extent that the state interferes. It is no longer actually the members of a nation who live together in community, but individual subjects who enter into a relationship with the state, i.e., with the spirit that prevails in its government, and indeed into a relationship in which the superior power of the state already inhibits the free play of forces. Uniform causes have uniform effects. The more the state intervenes, the more similar not only everything that acts becomes, but also everything that is acted upon. (...) But anyone who reasons in this way for others is, not without reason, suspected of misunderstanding humanity and wanting to turn people into machines."
Alexander von Humboldt
Copyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork"All men are equal and free: society by nature, and destination, is therefore autonomous and ungovernable. If the sphere of activity of each citizen is determined by the natural division of work and by the choice he makes of a profession, if the social functions are combined in such a way as to produce a harmonious effect, order results from the free activity of all men; there is no government. Whoever puts a hand on me to govern me is an usurper and a tyrant; I declare him my enemy."
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Copyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork"The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule."
Samuel Adams


Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!