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Justice is achieved only when injustice is absent.
Frederic Bastiat
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Justice can only exist in the absence of injustice.

This quote by Frederic Bastiat emphasizes the idea that true justice is an ideal state that cannot be reached if injustice is present. It suggests that for society to be just, all forms of unfair treatment or wrongdoings must be eliminated, highlighting the importance of vigilance in maintaining fairness and equity in social and legal systems.

Themes

JusticeInjusticeFairnessEquitySociety

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about social reform, one might say, 'As Frederic Bastiat noted, justice is achieved only when injustice is absent.'

More from Frederic Bastiat

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 substance of the people. Woe to the people that cannot limit the sphere of action of the state! Freedom, private enterprise, wealth, happiness, independence, personal dignity, all vanish.
Frederic BastiatRead
Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on.
Frederic BastiatRead
No society can exist if respect for the law does not to some extent prevail; but the surest way to have the laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality are in contradiction, the citizen finds himself in the cruel dilemma of either losing his moral sense or of losing respect for the law, two evils of which one is as great as the other, and between which it is difficult to choose.
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The law is the collective organization of the individual's right to lawful defense of his life, liberty and property. When it is used for anything else, no matter how noble the cause, it becomes perverted and justice is weakened. Thus, the law has become perverted by stupid greed and false philanthropy.
Frederic BastiatRead
If you wish to prosper, let your customer prosper.
Frederic BastiatRead
They will come to learn in the end, at their own expense, that it is better to endure competition for rich customers than to be invested with monopoly over impoverished customers.
Frederic BastiatRead

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