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.
Interpretation
Respect for the law is essential for society's existence, and laws should be made respectable to ensure that respect.
This quote emphasizes the importance of a society that respects law and order. Frederic Bastiat argues that laws should be created in a manner that garners respect from the citizens; otherwise, individuals may face a moral dilemma when laws conflict with personal morals, leading to a loss of either moral integrity or respect for the law itself. This tension between law and morality presents a serious challenge for citizens and the stability of society as a whole.
In practice
In a debate about the importance of law in maintaining societal structure.
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.
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.
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.
If you wish to prosper, let your customer prosper.
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.
Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.
The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.
Our memory is like a shop in the window of which is exposed now one, now another photograph of the same person. And as a rule the most recent exhibit remains for some time the only one to be seen.
God is not present in idols. Your feelings are your god. The soul is your temple.
...there is one thing that all Satan's cunning and all the snares of temptation cannot take by surprise - an undivided will.
Faith is a light of such supreme brilliance that it dazzles the mind and darkens all its visions of other realities, but in the end when we become used to the new light, we gain a new view of all reality transfigured and elevated in the light itself.
But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.
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