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.

In an economy, an act, a habit, an institution, or a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects. Of these effects, the first only is immediate; it manifests itself simultaneously with its cause - it is seen. The others unfold in succession - they are not seen. Now this difference is enormous, for it is often true that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the ultimate consequences are fatal, and the converse.

Man acquires wealth in proportion as he puts his labor to better account.

What, then is law [government]? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.

Trade protection accumulates upon a single point the good which it effects, while the evil inflicted is infused throughout the mass. The one strikes the eye at a first glance, while the other becomes perceptible only to close investigation.

And this is what has taken place. The delusion of the day is to enrich all classes at the expense of each other; it is to generalize plunder under pretense of organizing it.