Property Quotes

Property has its duties as well as its rights.

To make a claim of ownership implies a claim against others. That is, others must refrain from interfering with your use of that thing. As such the very act of the body occupying its standing room is to make a claim against others because only one body can occupy the space at a time.

Daniel Alexander Brackins

Because rights are only claims against other people, and not claims on other people and their property, rights end when they infringe on the rights of others.

Daniel Alexander Brackins

As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

James Madison

Mine is better than ours.

Benjamin Franklin

There can be to the ownership of anything no rightful title which is not derived from the title of the producer and does not rest upon the natural right of the man to himself.

Henry George

The instinct of ownership is fundamental in man's nature.

William James

The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property.

John Locke

Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?

Bible

Property is theft.

Proudhon

Property exists by grace of the law. It is not a fact but a legal fiction.

Max Stirner

The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it.

Henry David Thoreau

Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?

Matthew

Mine is better than ours.

Benjamin Franklin

There can be to the ownership of anything no rightful title which is not derived from the title of the producer and does not rest upon the natural right of the man to himself.

Henry George

The instinct of ownership is fundamental in man's nature.

William James

The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property.

John Locke

Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?

Bible

Property is theft.

Proudhon

Property exists by grace of the law. It is not a fact but a legal fiction.

Max Stirner

The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it.

Henry David Thoreau

Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?

Matthew

That which is worth telling is not worth having.

Raheel Farooq

It’s herding kittens. If kittens had a lot of guns and an overdose of neo-Libertarian property theory.

James S.A. Corey

For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses.

Oscar Wilde

In my mind, I could sense their roots under the soil, creeping in helical tangles of ever-increasing complexity outward and in all directions—out beyond the perimeter of the Helsingør Wood, out below Yami’s Under City, out along the banks of the river, out to the nearest coast and thereupon out into the sea; the roots crept down further along the continental shelf, downward into the abysses, downward into the ocean floor, burrowing under the corals and under trenches, and then back up again to sprout in the darkened forest on a foreign continent: all the trees of the world now had conjoined roots, for they were now of one conjoined consciousness!

Ashim Shanker

Water belongs to us all. Nature did not make the sun one person's property, nor air, nor water, cool and clear.

Michael Simpson

You are not property. If you choose to leave, no one will stop you.

Elizabeth Vaughan

The “pursuit of happiness” is such a key element of the “American (ideological) dream” that one tends to forget the contingent origin of this phrase: “We holds these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Where did the somewhat awkward “pursuit of happiness” come from in this famous opening passage of the US Declaration of Independence? The origin of it is John Locke, who claimed that all men had the natural rights of life, liberty, and property— the latter was replaced by “the pursuit of happiness” during negotiations of the drafting of the Declaration, as a way to negate the black slaves’ right to property.

Slavoj Žižek

...A vision from a universe where the Equal Rights Amendment--with its redefinition of personhood--is rejected by the house of deputies: A universe where to die is to become property and to be created outwith a gift of parental DNA is to be doomed to slavery.

Charles Stross

Central to Möser's view of the human world was "honor," a notion that was as important to corporatist society as the notion of dignity would be for the more individualistic society that succeeded it. In Möser's view, a person acquired his identity from his place in the institutional structure of society, a society in which economic, social, and political institutions were not distinguished from one another. His status (as a guildsman, noble landowner, serf, or independent peasant cottager) determined not only how he earned his living, but his sense of who he was, of what his duties and obligations were, of those to whom he ought to defer and those who ought to defer to him. (In the language of modern sociology, Möser's society was one in which almost all of the individual's roles derived from a single status.) Who one was was largely a continuation of what one's forebears had been. For Möser the real self was the socially encumbered self, the self based on status, on historical and regional particularity, and on property. It was a self whose prime virtue was honor. Status and the honor that attached to it were inherited, although they could be lost if one failed to live up to the duties of one's rank.

Jerry Z. Muller

The pyramid shape is said to hold many secrets and amazing properties. One of them is a sense of wonder.

Vera Nazarian

Take one famous example: arguments about property destruction after Seattle. Most of these, I think, were really arguments about capitalism. Those who decried window-breaking did so mainly because they wished to appeal to middle-class consumers to move towards global exchange-style green consumerism, and to ally with labor bureaucracies and social democrats abroad. This was not a path designed to provoke a direct confrontation with capitalism, and most of those who urged us to take this route were at least skeptical about the possibility that capitalism could ever really be defeated. Many were in fact in favor of capitalism, if in a significantly humanized form. Those who did break windows, on the other hand, didn't care if they offended suburban homeowners, because they did not figure that suburban homeowners were likely to ever become a significant element in any future revolutionary anticapitalist coalition. They were trying, in effect, to hijack the media to send a message that the system was vulnerable -- hoping to inspire similar insurrectionary acts on the part of those who might be considering entering a genuinely revolutionary alliance; alienated teenagers, oppressed people of color, undocumented workers, rank-and-file laborers impatient with union bureaucrats, the homeless, the unemployed, the criminalized, the radically discontent. If a militant anticapitalist movement was to begin, in America, it would have to start with people like these: people who don't need to be convinced that the system is rotten, only, that there's something they can do about it. And at any rate, even if it were possible to have an anticapitalist revolution without gun-battles in the streets -- which most of us are hoping it is, since let's face it, if we come up against the US army, we will lose -- there's no possible way we could have an anticapitalist revolution while at the same time scrupulously respecting property rights. Yes, that will probably mean the suburban middle class will be the last to come on board. But they would probably be the last to come on board anyway.

David Graeber

Just as sex is a God-given instinct for the prolongation of the human race, so the desire for property as a prolongation of one's ego is a natural right sanctioned by natural law. A person is free on the inside because he can call his soul his own; he is free on the outside because he can call property his own. Internal freedom is based upon the fact that "I am"; external freedom is based on the fact that "I have." But just as the excesses of flesh produce lust, for lust is sex in the wrong place, so there can be a deordination of the desire for property until it becomes greed, avarice, and capitalistic aggression.

Fulton J. Sheen

For the same reason a disease cannot be cured by more of the germ that caused it, the inflation and debt accumulation of the Obama years will not inflate our way out of it.

Ron Paul

This dog is mine," said those poor children; "that is my place in the sun." Here is the beginning and the image of the usurpation of all the earth.

Blaise Pascal

What is this you call property? It cannot be the earth. For the land is our mother, nourishing all her children, beasts, birds, fish, and all men. The woods, the streams, everything on it belongs to everybody and is for the use of all. How can one man say it belongs to him only?

Massasoit

The purchaser draws boundaries, fences himself in, and says, “This is mine; each one by himself, each one for himself.” Here, then, is a piece of land upon which, henceforth, no one has a right to step, save the proprietor and his friends; which can benefit nobody, save the proprietor and his servants. Let these sales multiply, and soon the people — who have been neither able nor willing to sell, and who have received none of the proceeds of the sale — will have nowhere to rest, no place of shelter, no ground to till. They will die of hunger at the proprietor’s door, on the edge of that property which was their birthright; and the proprietor, watching them die, will exclaim, “So perish idlers and vagrants!

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Go to hell.""I've already been there. I own property in it.

Tessa Bailey

If you believe in democracy, make arrangements to distribute property as widely as possible.

Aldous Huxley

Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long that they have come to esteem the religious, learned and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Libertarianism holds that the only proper role of violence is to defend person and property against violence, that any use of violence that goes beyond such just defense is itself aggressive, unjust, and criminal

Murray N. Rothbard

No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

Gideon J. (Gideon John) Tucker

My grandfather used to say ‘It is my house I am paying the bills’,my dad used to say ‘this is my house I pay the mortgage’,my generation is saying this is my house I pay the rent.

Csaba Gabor-B

Americans think New Yorkers are property obsessed, but clearly they haven’t lived a day in Hong Kong. In this part of the world, a man isn’t a man until he is a homeowner. His entire life leads up to the singular moment when he hands over the down-payment check and puts his signature on the triplicate purchase agreement. All the good grades and job promotions he has received are mere preparation; and every source of happiness - marriage, children and retirement - depends on it.

Jason Y. Ng

You know that when a group of utility workers are withholding their customer service identification cards, they are likely engaging in some form of illegal activity at your home.

Steven Magee

Do you know how they brainwash people? They repeat something over and over. And that's what we do in this country. Owning things is good. More money is good. More property is good. More commercialism is good. More is good. More is good. We repeat it-- and have it repeated to us-- over and over until nobody bothers to even think otherwise. The average person is so fogged up by all this, he has no perspective on what's really important anymore.

Mitch Albom

Nobody is sure of his life, property and health when the parliament deliberates.

Janusz Korwin-Mikke

Torturing innocents, murdering civilians and destroying public property; they are all the gifts we have been given by religion.

M.F. Moonzajer

In fact, if law were restricted to protecting all persons, all liberties, and all properties; if law were nothing more than the organized combination of the individual's right to self-defense; if law were the obstacle, the check, the punisher of all oppression and plunder — is it likely that we citizens would then argue much about the extent of the franchise?

Frédéric Bastiat

If the Pentateuch is not inspired in its astronomy, geology, geography, history or philosophy, if it is not inspired concerning slavery, polygamy, war, law, religious or political liberty, or the rights of men, women and children, what is it inspired in, or about? The unity of God?—that was believed long before Moses was born. Special providence?—that has been the doctrine of ignorance in all ages. The rights of property?—theft was always a crime. The sacrifice of animals?—that was a custom thousands of years before a Jew existed. The sacredness of life?—there have always been laws against murder. The wickedness of perjury?—truthfulness has always been a virtue. The beauty of chastity?—the Pentateuch does not teach it. Thou shalt worship no other God?—that has been the burden of all religions.

Robert G. Ingersoll

Property is not the natural and obvious and inevitable concept that most people think it is.

Robert A. Heinlein

Our goals can only be achieved with a society that respects and equally protects the rights of every human being, old and young, rich and poor, regardless of gender, color, race, or creed. We must reject the initiation of violence by individuals or government as morally repugnant.

Ron Paul

It was not, then, race and culture calling out of the South in 1876; it was property and privilege, shrieking to its own kind, and privilege and property heard and recognized the voice of its own.

W.E.B. Du Bois

People are not like a business. You can’t buy and sell them like so much property. You can’t lock them up in a vault and expect them to appreciate it.

Harold Robbins

A pickpocket is obviously a champion of private enterprise. But it would perhaps be an exaggeration to say that a pickpocket is a champion of private property. The point about Capitalism and Commercialism, as conducted of late, is that they have really preached the extension of business rather than the preservation of belongings; and have at best tried to disguise the pickpocket with some of the virtues of the pirate.

G.K. Chesterton

It is a policeman’s duty to retrieve stolen property and return it to its owners. But when robbery becomes the purpose of the law, and the policeman’s duty becomes, not protection, but the plunder of property - then it is an outlaw who has to become a policeman.

Ayn Rand

Taxes are what we pay for civilized society, for modernity, and for prosperity. The wealthy pay more because they have benefitted more. Taxes, well laid and well spent, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare. Taxes protect property and the environment; taxes make business possible. Taxes pay for roads and schools and bridges and police and teachers. Taxes pay for doctors and nursing homes and medicine. During an emergency, like an earthquake or a hurricane, taxes pay for rescue workers, shelters, and services. For people whose lives are devastated by other kinds of disaster, like the disaster of poverty, taxes pay, even, for food.

Jill Lepore

We own the things that claim that we are theirs.

Jay Mark D. Saga-ad

You know, there’s no pleasure like the joy of being a sexual woman. You can take your careers, your money, your houses and possessions, and you go and throw them in a lake. Because life is really all about sex. That’s what I keep learning, again and again. It’s the most important thing, woven into the very centre of life. And I just know I was put on this earth to be a sexual woman, and to explore as much about sex as I can.

Fiona Thrust

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Property Quotes

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