Property Quotes - 8
More Property Quotes
No' wan in fifty kens a wurd Burns wrote But misapplied is a'body's property
Grieve— 1926 A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, l.41-2.
Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroysmy property, and kills or threatenstokill me or those that are in it, and to'bind me in all cases whatsoever'to his absolute will, am I to suffer it?
thomas paine— 1776 The Crisis, introduction, Dec.
The democracy which shows up in the United States and in England is not an ideal democracy, because the will of the people is under the pressure of property, which is in the hands of the wealthy capitalists.
hans fritzsche— To Leon Goldensohn, May 8, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004
Through the broad extent of country over which you have marched by your respect for the rights and property of citizens, you have shown that you were soldiers not only to defend but able and willing to defend and protect.
thomas "stonewall" jackson— As quoted in Shenandoah Valley Pioneers and Their Descendants : A History of Frederick County, Virginia (illustrated) from its formation in 1738 to 1908 (1989) by T. K. Cartmell, p. 322
As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.
Adam Smith— Chapter VI, p. 60
Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.
Adam Smith— Chapter I, Part II, p. 770
The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself.
derek walcott— Interview with Ed Hirsch (1986), Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Eighth Series (Penguin, 1988)
There is nothing which so generally strikes the imagination, and engages the affections of mankind, as the right of property; or that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe. And yet there are very few, that will give themselves the trouble to consider the original and foundation of this right.
william blackstone— Book II, ch. 1: Of Property in General
Unless the fundamental categories of economics such as ‘property’ were to be redefined in a radically personal way the liberal rationalist curse which had established economics as a scientific discipline cut off from human interests would proliferate. Economic models … have failed to incorporate any meaningful index of individual benefit other than the original utilitarian one, … the index of increasing income or an increasing flow of commodities.
john carroll— p. 145 (Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974))
It is a political axiom that power follows property.
aldous huxley— Chapter 12 (p. 113)
… mankind has no right to employ its genius in the creation of another intelligent species, then treat it like property. If we've come so far that we can create as God creates, then we have to learn to act with the justice and mercy of God.
dean r. koontz— Part 1, Chapter 7.8; Garrison Dilworth on the responsibility to help keep Einstein free
For better or worse, we are the Court of Appeals for the Hollywood Circuit. Millions of people toil in the shadow of the law we make, and much of their livelihood is made possible by the existence of intellectual property rights. But much of their livelihood - and much of the vibrancy of our culture - also depends on the existence of other intangible rights: The right to draw ideas from a rich and varied public domain, and the right to mock, for profit as well as fun, the cultural icons of our time.
alex kozinski— Discussing the right of publicity issue raised in the case White v. Samsung Elec. Am., Inc., 989 F.2d 1512 (9th Cir. 1993). [1]
In conditions of private property ... “life-activity” stands in the service of property instead of property standing the service of free life-activity.
herbert marcuse— "The Foundations of Historical Materialism," Studies in Critical Philosophy (1972), p. 32
Whatever open-border libertarians think about immigration law, once the immigration scofflaw steals, trespasses, or vandalizes private property, said alien is guilty of crimes. To say, moreover, that the state’s laws made masses of men and women commit such crimes is to voice the philosophy of determinism, not individualism.
ilana mercer— “That Spot of Bother on the Border,” WorldNetDaily.com, May 4, 2007.
Mankind is divided into rich and poor, into property owners and exploited; and to abstract oneself from this fundamental division, and from the antagonism between poor and rich, means abstracting oneself from fundamental facts.
joseph stalin— Interview with H. G. Wells (September 1937)
The earth has been cultivated before it has been divided; the cultivation itself having been the only motive for a division, and for that law which secures to every one his property. For the first persons who have employed themselves in cultivation, have probably worked as much land as their strength would permit, and, consequently, more than was necessary for their own nourishment.
turgot, anne robert jacques, baron de laune— § 2
If slavery, barbarism and desolation are to be called peace, men can have no worse misfortune. No doubt there are usually more and sharper quarrels between parents and children, than between masters and slaves; yet it advances not the art of household management to change a father's right into a right of property, and count children but as slaves. Slavery, then, and not peace, is furthered by handing, over the whole authority to one man.
— Baruch Spinoza, in Political Treatise (1677), Tractatus Politicus as translated by A. H. Gosset (1883), Ch. 6, On Monarchy - Alternate site (this is an unfinished work, left incomplete by Spinoza's death).
I believe in evil . It is the property of all those who are certain of truth . Despair and fanaticism are only differing manifestations of evil.
— Edward Teller, as quoted in The Martians of Science : Five Physicists Who Changed the Twentieth Century (2006) by Istvan Hargittai, p. 251
Quotas are a perfectly logical, if diabolical, extension of the regulation of private property courtesy of the Civil Rights Act, whereby in an attempt to shape American society in politically pleasing ways, people have been coerced into liking, hiring or renting against their will or better judgment.
— “Liberty and the Civil Wrongs Act,” WorldNetDaily.com, April 2, 2010.
I will be no party to paying out of charity property costs which are not properly payable out of it.
— Kay, J., In re St. Stephen, Coleman Street; In re St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury (1888), L. R. 39 C. D. 507.
The power to regulate the disposal of property after death ought not to extend to doing it in a manner tending to the prejudice of the living.
— Lord Truro, Brownlow v. Egerton (1854), 23 L. J. Rep. Part 5 (N. S.), Ch. 403.
Personal injury is a more serious matter than damage to property.
— Cockburn, C.J., Reg. v. Heppinstale (1859), 7 W. R. 178.
Most libertarians agree that all rights are, in effect, property rights, beginning with this fundamental right to self-ownership and control of one's own life. As owners of their own lives, individuals are completely free to do absolutely anything they wish with them provided, of course, that it doesn't violate the identical right of others whether the people around them approve of what they do or not.
— L. Neil Smith, and Rylla Cathryn Smith in What Libertarians Believe, Introduction: The Zero Aggression Principle
The code of the Bourgeoisie ... is different from the Feudal code of the past, of the knightly classes, and of Chivalry; it is different from the Democratic code of the future of brotherhood and of equality; it is the code of the Commercial age and its distinctive watchword is property. The Respectability of today is the respectability of property. There is nothing so respectable as being well-off.
— Edward Carpenter (1889) Defence of criminals: A criticism of morality
One would have thought that it was even more necessary to limit population than property; and that the limit should be fixed by calculating the chances of mortality in the children, and of sterility in married persons. The neglect of this subject, which in existing states is so common, is a never-failing cause of poverty among the citizens; and poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.
— Book II, Section VI (translation by Benjamin Jowett)
One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.
— Robert H. Jackson (1943). West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. Supreme Court of the United States. pp. 319 U.S. 624, 638.
property has its duties as well as its rights.
— 1838 Letter to the Earl of Donoughmore, 22 May.
property has its duties as well as its rights.
— Thomas Drummond, letter to the Tipperary Magistrates (May 22, 1838). Letter composed jointly by Drummond, Wolfe and Pigot. Phrase quoted by Gladstone, also by Disraeli, Sybil, Book I, Chapter 11.
