Quotes · Quote card
Quotation from The Law by Frédéric Bastiat
“It is not because men have made laws, that personality, liberty, and property exist. On the contrary, it is because personality, liberty, and property exist beforehand, that men make laws.”
The Law, Opening section, on life and its faculties, trans. Anonymous (Putnam, 1874)
The reversal at the centre of the argument: law presupposes rights rather than creating them.
Citation: "It is not because men have made laws, that personality, liberty, and property exist. On the contrary, it is because personality, liberty, and property exist beforehand, that men make laws." — Frédéric Bastiat, The Law, Opening section, on life and its faculties, trans. Anonymous (Putnam, 1874). (id bastiat-the-law-q3)
Portrait: Bastiat, Émile Desmaisons. Lithograph by Auguste-Hilaire Léveillé., Public domain.
