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Claude-Frédéric Bastiat (French: [klod fʁedeʁik bastja]; 29 June 1801 – 24 December 1850) was a French economist and author who was a prominent member of the French Liberal School.[1]Bastiat developed the economic concept of opportunity cost and introduced the parable of the broken window. He was also a Freemason and member of the French National Assembly.[2]
As an advocate of classical economics and the economics of Adam Smith, his views favored a free market and influenced the Austrian School.[3]
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Bastiat was the author of many works on economics and political economy, generally characterized by their clear organization, forceful argumentation and acerbic wit.
“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.”
― The Law
“The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.”
“Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone.”
“But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.”
―The Law
“When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.”
“When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.”
― The Law
“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?”
― The Law
Source (qoutes) https://www.goodreads.com/author/quo..._d_ric_Bastiat
Bastiat's portrait (not a photo but still realistic enough to be useful in VI):
