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.
Interpretation
The quote warns against an expanding state that outgrows its means, leading to the erosion of personal freedoms and dignity.
Frédéric Bastiat's quote reflects the dangers of a state that increases its power and influence beyond sustainable limits, which ultimately affects the people's freedom and prosperity. It suggests that when the state becomes too expansive and intrusive, it can stifle private enterprise and individual rights, leading to a loss of wealth, happiness, and dignity among its citizens. Bastiat's perspective emphasizes the need for individuals to restrict state power to ensure their personal freedoms and maintain a healthy society.
In practice
In a speech about government intervention, emphasizing the importance of personal freedoms.
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.
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.
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 weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. For the least sin, it wouldn't take us longTo get so we had no one left to live with.For to be social is to be forgiving.
The mind we have when we practice zazen is the great mind: we don't try to see anything; we stop conceptual thinking; we stop emotional activity; we just sit. Whatever happens to us, we are not bothered. We just sit. It is like something happening in the great sky. Whatever kind of bird flies through it, the sky doesn't care. That is the mind transmitted from Buddha to us.
As individuals, people are inherently good. I have a somewhat more pessimistic view of people in groups. And I remain extremely concerned when I see what's happening in our country, which is in many ways the luckiest place in the world. We don't seem to be excited about making our country a better place for our kids.
In the South, there is more overt racism. It's more willfully ignorant and brazen. But it's not as if by moving I'm going to be able to escape institutionalized racism. It's not as though my life won't be twisted and impacted by racism anymore. It will.
God damn! Drug dealers dealin' to the kiddies,_x000D_ _x000D_ Livin' in the city ain't no pity on the itty-bitty._x000D_ _x000D_ We try to cry, but still they all die,_x000D_ _x000D_ I try to speak to the youth, and the truth is: they all high.
A system of morality that is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception that has nothing sound in it and nothing true.
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