Legal Plunder Quotes & Sayings

This question of legal plunder must be settled once and for all, and there are only three ways to settle it: (1) The few plunder the many. (2) Everybody plunders everybody. (3) Nobody plunders anybody. — Frederic Bastiat

So, uh," I said, shuffling from one foot to the other, "want to go with me to check up on Obliteration? If you're not doing anything else important, I mean."
She cocked her head. "Did you just invite me on a date ... to spy on a deadly Epic planning to destroy the city?"
"Well, I don't have a lot of experience with dating, but I've always heard you're supposed to pick something you know the girl will enjoy ... "
She smiled. "Well, let's get to it then. — Brandon Sanderson

The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending his acquired rights. He will claim that the state is obligated to protected and encourage his particular industry; that this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry is thus able to spend more and to pay higher wages to the poor workingmen.
Do not listen to this sophistry by vested interests. The acceptance of these arguments will build legal plunder into a whole system. In fact, this has already occurred. The present-day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it. — Frederic Bastiat

Now, legal plunder may be exercised in an infinite multitude of ways. Hence come an infinite multitude of plans for organization; tariffs, protection, perquisites, gratuities, encouragements, progressive taxation, free public education, right to work, right to profit, right to wages, right to assistance, right to instruments of labor, gratuity of credit, etc., etc. And it is all these plans, taken as a whole, with what they have in common, legal plunder, that takes the name of socialism. — Frederic Bastiat

If government goes beyond securing liberty and instead violates it through regulation, redistribution, and planning, then citizens are victims of legal plunder. — Richard Ebeling

There are people who think that plunder loses all its immorality as soon as it becomes legal. Personally, I cannot imagine a more alarming situation. — Frederic Bastiat

Justice is juxtaposition in us
Justice for all just ain't specific enough. — Common

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

Legal plunder has two roots: One, as we have just seen, is in human selfishness; the other is in false philanthropy. — Frederic Bastiat

You say: "There are persons who lack education" and you turn to the law. But the law is not, in itself, a torch of learning which shines its light abroad. The law extends over a society where some persons have knowledge and others do not; where some citizens need to learn, and others can teach. In this matter of education, the law has only two alternatives: It can permit this transaction of teaching-and-learning to operate freely and without the use of force, or it can force human wills in this matter by taking from some of them enough to pay the teachers who are appointed by government to instruct others, without charge. But in the second case, the law commits legal plunder by violating liberty and property. — Frederic Bastiat

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. — Frederic Bastiat

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. — Frederic Bastiat

The act of committing yourself to the Lord daily allows Him to guide you. — Elizabeth George

Legal plunder has two roots: One of them, as I have said before, is in human greed; the other is in false philanthropy. — Frederic Bastiat

Call me Richard. That's my real name. Call me that. — Stephen King

Legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways; hence, there are an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, bonuses, subsidies, incentives, the progressive income tax, free education, the right to employment, the right to profit, the right to wages, the right to relief, the right to the tools of production, interest free credit, etc., etc. And it the aggregate of all these plans, in respect to what they have in common, legal plunder, that goes under the name of socialism. — Frederic Bastiat

No legal plunder: This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony, and logic. Until the day of my death, I shall proclaim this principle with all the force of my lungs (which alas! is all too inadequate). — Frederic Bastiat

But what do the socialists do? They cleverly disguise this legal plunder from others
and even from themselves
under the seductive names of fraternity, unity, organization, and association. Because we ask so little from the law
only justice
the socialists thereby assume that we reject fraternity, unity, organization, and association. — Frederic Bastiat

Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame and danger that their acts would otherwise involve ... 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 the other persons to whom it doesn't 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. Then abolish that law without delay - No legal plunder; this is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony and logic. — Frederic Bastiat

Don't allow anybody to make you feel that you're nobody. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The politician attempts to remedy the evil by increasing the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder. — Frederic Bastiat