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 beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place. – Frederic Bastiat
In short, is not liberty the freedom of every person to make full use of his faculties, so long as he does not harm other persons while doing so? – Frederic Bastiat
And what is liberty, whose very name makes the heart beat faster and shakes the world? Is it not the union of all liberties – liberty of conscience, of education, of association, of the press, of travel, or labor, or trade? – Frederic Bastiat
Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. – Frederic Bastiat
Nature in darkness groans and men are bound to sullen contemplation in the night: restless they turn on beds of sorrow; in their inmost brain feeling the crushing wheels, they rise, they write the bitter words of stern philosophy and knead the bread of knowledge with tears and groans. – William Blake