quotations about property
The idea of property arises out of the combative instincts of the species. Long before men were men, the ancestral ape was a proprietor. Primitive property is what a beast will fight for. The dog and his bone, the tigress and her lair, the roaring stag and his herd, these are proprietorship blazing.
H. G. WELLS
"Pause In Reconstruction And The Dawn Of Modern Socialism", The Outline of History
God hath endowed all men with the right of acquiring, possessing and protecting property.
KAMEHAMEHA V
attributed, Day's Collacon
Any man who holds property injurious to the peace of that society of which he is a member, thereby violates the condition upon the observance of which his right to the property is alone guaranteed.
CHARLES JAMES FAULKNER
speech in the House of Delegates of Virginia, January 20, 1832
Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties or his possessions.
JAMES MADISON
The National Gazette, March 29, 1792
Settling other people's land is an American tradition.
ARIEL GORE
Atlas of the Human Heart
Where there's property, there's theft.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Dispossessed
Private property has made us so stupid and partial that an object is only ours when we have it, when it exists for us as capital ... Thus all the physical and intellectual senses have been replaced by ... the sense of having.
KARL MARX
Early Writings
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
Self-Reliance
Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Walden
By doing good with his property, a man, as it were, stamps the image of God upon it, and makes it pass current for the merchandise of heaven.
ANDREW WYNTER
attributed, Day's Collacon
The most important of all of the rights, really the foundation of all rights, are the rights to private property. But the right to private property is a right for each individual human being to own himself.
HARRY V. JAFFA
"The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate", The Independent Institute, May 7, 2002
Property is theft!
PIERRE-JOSEPH PROUDHON
What is Property?
Precisely in proportion as it is important to preserve the property which a man has in the results of his own efforts, is it important to abolish that which he has in the results of the efforts of someone else.
R. H. TAWNEY
The Acquisitive Society
The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
KARL MARX
The Communist Manifesto
People with advantages are loath to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages. They come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves 'naturally' elite, and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves.
C. WRIGHT MILLS
The Power of Elite
Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.
ADAM SMITH
The Wealth of Nations
How is property given? By restraining liberty; that is, by taking it away so far as necessary for the purpose. How is your house made yours? By debarring every one else from the liberty of entering it without your leave.
JEREMY BENTHAM
"A Critical Examination of the Declaration of Rights", The Works of Jeremy Bentham
If we do not restore the Institution of Property we cannot escape restoring the Institution of Slavery; there is no third course.
HILAIRE BELLOC
The Servile State
Private property ... has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain not growth its aim.
OSCAR WILDE
The Soul of Man Under Socialism
We are accused of being obsessed by property. The truth is the other way round. It is the society and culture in question which is so obsessed. Yet to an obsessive his obsession always seems to be of the nature of things and so is not recognized for what it is.
JOHN BERGER
attributed, Seeing Berger: A Revaluation of Ways of Seeing