Quotes About Property

For the mass of men the idea of artistic creation can only be expressed by an idea unpopular in present discussions - the idea of property... Property is merely the art of the democracy... One would think, to hear people talk, that the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers were on the side of property. But obviously they are the enemies of property; because they are enemies of their own limitations.

In civilized communities, property as well as personal rights is an essential object of the laws, which encourage industry by securing the enjoyment of its fruits; that industry from which property results, and that enjoyment which consists not merely in its immediate use, but in its posthumous destination to objects of choice, and of kindred affection. In a just and free government, therefore, the rights both of property and of persons ought to be effectually guarded.

We hold that the ownership of private property is the right and privilege of every American citizen and is one of the foundation stones upon which this nation and its free enterprise system has been built and has prospered. We feel that private property rights and human rights are inseparable and indivisible. Only in those nations that guarantee the right of ownership of private property as basic and sacred under their law is there any recognition of human rights.

It is not theft, properly speaking, to take secretly and use another's property in a case of extreme need: because that which he takes for the support of his life becomes his own property by reason of that need

..every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. .... The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property.

Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty. It denotes that he is a subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master.

Anyone who has property that exceed his needs, let him support someone whose property does not (meet his or her needs), and anyone whose food exceeds his needs, let him share it with someone who does not have food.

If we buy into the notion that somehow property rights are less important, or are in conflict with, human or civil rights, we give the socialists a freer hand to attack our property.

By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber.

What’s happened is that, almost overnight, we’ve switched from democracy in real-property recording to oligarchy in real-property recording. There was no court case behind this, no statute from Congress or the state legislatures. It was accomplished in a private corporate decision. The banks just did it.

The last point for consideration is the supposed disposition of the people to interfere with the rights of property. So essential does it appear to me, to the cause of good government, that the rights of property should be held sacred, that I would agree to deprive those of the elective franchise against whom it could justly be alleged that they considered it their interest to invade them.

I understood when I was just a child that without water, everything dies. I didn't understand until much later that no one "owns" water. It might rise on your property, but it just passes through. You can use it, and abuse it, but it is not yours to own. It is part of the global commons, not "property" but part of our life support system.

Property in land is as indefensible as property in man.

Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms. As for the victims, the government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result.

Creation is not a property, which we can rule over at will; or, even less, is the property of only a few: Creation is a gift, it is a wonderful gift that God has given us, so that we care for it and we use it for the benefit of all, always with great respect and gratitude.

During World War II, Joseph Stalin was once asked by an American writer, according to Professor Dean Russell, how he could justify conscripting all the property of all the people for use by the government to fight the war. Stalin answered by asking why they considered it more immoral and illogical to conscript lifeless property than to conscript life itself, as was being done in the United States and all other capitalistic countries. His American challenger had no answer, because there was no answer.

On a nationwide basis, I would guess that the various churches would have to pay annually an amount at least equal to the national debt. But it's impossible for me to make an exact estimate, because the churches hide their wealth in every way they can - deliberate falsification as to the value of property, registering it under phony names in order to obscure the fact that the Church owns the property.

Collective property and individual property, these two banners will be the standards under which, from now on, the great battles of the future will be fought.

I like getting involved with the people and finding out exactly what is happening. Does it have to do with the property, the home, the individuals, or a combination of everything? To me, that's always been my main goal, to find some information, to bring some type of resolution to help the people out with a piece of property that is having a major problem or a haunting. That's always been my passion and still is to this day when getting involved with anything, to try to find answers and help people.

Now property is part of a household, and the acquisition of property part of household-management; for neither life itself nor the good life is possible without a certain minimum supply of the necessities.

Maybe I'm overly pessimistic, but most of Africa is a continent without much hope for its people... What [Africa] needs, the West cannot give. ...what Africans need is personal liberty...[and] guarantees of private property rights and rule of law.

Excise: A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.

In a world of private property, if something isn't owned by somebody, it's going to be misused by somebody else.

No longer enslaved or made dependent by force of law, the great majority are so by force of property; they are still chained to a place, to an occupation, and to conformity with the will of an employer, and debarred by the accident of birth to both the enjoyments, and from the mental and moral advantages, which others inherit without exertion and independently of desert. That this is an evil equal to almost any of those against which mankind have hitherto struggles, the poor are not wrong in believing.

Every politically controlled educational system will inculcate the doctrine of state supremacy sooner or later. . . . Once that doctrine has been accepted, it becomes an almost superhuman task to break the stranglehold of the political power over the life of the citizen. It has had his body, property and mind in its clutches from infancy. An octopus would sooner release its prey. A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.

Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.

The Constitution. . . illustrates the complexity of the American system: that it serves the interests of a wealthy elite, but also does enough for small property owners, for middle-income mechanics and farmers, to build a broad base of support. The slightly prosperous people who make up this base of support are buffers against the blacks, the Indians, the very poor whites. They enable the elite to keep control with a minimum of coercion, a maximum of law--all made palatable by the fanfare of patriotism and unity.

I think there's a little more attention to human needs than to property rights. But I don't think much of political activism. It's so shortsighted. Most people are interested in their own personal comfort. I've said that about environmentalists. I think they care about bike paths and places to park their Volvos, not the planet as an abstraction.

A State, in idea, is the opposite of a Church. A State regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, etc. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradations of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A Church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy.

If Congress sees fit to impose a capitation, or other direct tax, it must be laid in proportion to the census; if Congress determines to impose duties, imposts, and excises, they must be uniform throughout the United States. These are not strictly limitations of power. They are rules prescribing the mode in which it shall be exercised... This review shows that personal property, contracts, occupations, and the like have never been regarded by Congress as proper subjects of direct tax.

The people of Central America - and, in a broader sense, the entire developing world - need to know first-hand that freedom and opportunity are not just for the elite, but the birthright of every citizen; that property is not just something enjoyed by a few, but can be owned by any individual who works hard and makes correct decisions.

Our time on earth and our energy, intelligence, opportunities, relationships, and resources are all gifts from God that he has entrusted to our care and management. We are stewards of whatever God gives us. This concept of stewardship begins with the recognition that God is the owner of everything and everyone on earth. ... We never actually own anything during our brief stay on earth. God just loans the earth to us while we're here. It was God's property before you arrived, and God will loan it to someone else after you die.

A father of the church said that property was theft, many centuries before Proudhon was born. Bourdaloue reaffirmed it. Montesquieu was the inventor of national workshops and of the theory that the state owed every man a living. Nay, was not the church herself the first organized democracy?

The earth is the general and equal possession of all humanity and therefore cannot be the property of individuals.

Things work once you have property, trade and contract in place.

But please know, whether you believe campaign contributions are speech or property, that I learned to love very dearly the right of free expression when I lived without that freedom for a while a long time ago.

I think that 'Halo' is a hard property because they don't need to make a film. They make far more money out of the games so why risk?

There are libertarian values which say private property is the overarching value, the sanctity thereof, and there are egalitarians who say health care should be shared and so on. That's fair enough.

A pure Democracy, by which I mean a Society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the Government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of Government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is, that such Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths.

People had been working for so many years to make the world a safe, organized place. Nobody realized how boring it would become. With the whole world property-lined and speed-limited and zoned and taxed and regulated, with everyone tested and registered and adressed and recorded. Nobody had left much room for adventure, except maybe the kind you could buy. [...] The laws that keep us safe, these same laws condemn us to boredom.

Everyone has an equal and absolute right to sovereignty over his own body, his own property, and his own life, and to pursue his own happiness in any way that he chooses. No one has the authority to grant rights to anyone else, because human beings already possess all natural rights at birth. These rights include both personal and economic freedoms, and the only way they can be lost is if someone takes them away by force. The only right that an individual does not naturally possess is the right to violate someone else's liberty.

Strict justice would demand total confiscation of your property, personal imprisonment and fines.

If slavery be a sin, it is not yours. It does not rest on your action for its origin, on your consent for its existence. It is a common law right to property in the service of man; its origin was Divine decree.

Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.

From the Anarchist standpoint, these artificial hindrances which are the cause of three main forms of usury-interest, profit, and rent, are, in the order of their importance, monopoly in the control of the circulating medium-money and credit, private property in land not based on occupancy and use, patent rights and copyrights, and tariffs.

Lord, if I thought you were listening, I'd pray for this above all: that any church set up in your name should remain poor, and powerless, and modest. That it should wield no authority except that of love. That it should never cast anyone out. That it should own no property and make no laws. That it should not condemn, but only forgive.

I think the term "intellectual property" should be avoided, not because it's a bad term, but because it mixes things up that shouldn't be mixed up. There are different forms, and they hardly have anything to do with each other.

I was very lucky to be offered a lovely piece of property to build a career on. I started building a house on it, but it wasn't necessarily a house I would want to live in. So I ripped down that house, and I worked with these great lumberjacks to build a really cool cabin-a place I want to drink whiskey in and hang out until the sun rises.