Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else

From Government by Frederic Bastiat, written in 1848.

We are all making some similar request to the Government; but Government cannot satisfy one party without adding to the labor of the others. Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. Every one is, more or less, for profiting by the labors of others. No one would dare to express such a sentiment; he even hides it from himself.