Tuesday, June 28, 2011

The law comes from natural rights, natural rights do not come from the law

"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."

- Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850), The Law (1850).

2 comments:

christian soldier said...

looked him up-thanks for the heads up...
Carol-CS

Mark in Spokane said...

Glad to have introduced you to Bastiat. His book The Law is one of the great masterpieces of the 19th century -- our world would have been infinitely better off if people has listed to Bastiat instead of to the German philosophers of the 19th century, that's for certain.