Occupation: Economist Birth: June 30, 1801 Death: December 24, 1850
Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain - and since labor is pain in itself - it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder i….
Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law,….
If philanthropy is not voluntary, it destroys liberty and justice. The law can give nothing that has not first been taken from its owner..
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 perso….
The law has been perverted, and the powers of the state have become perverted along with it. The law has not only been turned from its proper functio….
The most urgent necessity is, not that the State should teach, but that it should allow education. All monopolies are detestable, but the worst of al….
The real cost of the State is the prosperity we do not see, the jobs that don’t exist, the technologies to which we do not have access, the businesse….
Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons and gendarmes at th….
Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed before….
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 ar….
Here I encounter the most popular fallacy of our times. It is not considered sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and i….
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 state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else..
Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we ….
Treat all economic questions from the viewpoint of the consumer, for the interests of the consumer are the interests of the human race..
People are beginning to realize that the apparatus of government is costly. But what they do not know is that the burden falls inevitably on them..
The state tends to expand in proportion to its means of existence and to live beyond its means, and these are, in the last analysis, nothing but the ….
When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it..
Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone..
It's always tempting to do good at someone else's expense.
When misguided public opinion honors what is despicable and despises what is honorable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful ….