Black

“In fact, if law were restricted to protecting all persons, all liberties, and all properties; if law were nothing more than the organized combination of the individual's right to self-defense; if law were the obstacle, the check, the punisher of all oppression and plunder — is it likely that we citizens would then argue much about the extent of the franchise?”
― Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

“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.”
― Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

“Legal plunder has two roots: One of them, as I have said before, is in human greed; the other is in false philanthropy.”
― Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

“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.”
― Frederic Bastiat, The Law