Quotes on property
Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.
Bastiat, Frederic
An argument fatal to the communist theory, is suggested by the fact, that a desire for property is one of the elements of our nature.
Spencer, Herbert
The preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks is of more importance to the public than all the property of all the rich men in the country.
Adams, John
Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark.
Lippmann, Walter
Men would live exceedingly quiet if these two words, mine and thine were taken away.
Anaxagoras
Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.
Locke, John
If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.
Mises, Ludwig von
Upon the sacredness of property civilization itself depends - the right of the laborer to his hundred dollars in the savings bank, and equally the legal right of the millionaire to his millions.
Carnegie, Andrew
The earth is the general and equal possession of all humanity and therefore cannot be the property of individuals.
Tolstoy, Leo
As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
So long as the great majority of men are not deprived of either property or honor, they are satisfied.
Machiavelli, Niccolo
Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.
Thoreau, Henry David
Some people talk of morality, and some of religion, but give me a little snug property.
Edgeworth, Maria
No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic also.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Whenever there is a conflict between human rights and property rights, human rights must prevail.
Lincoln, Abraham
Don't you know that if people could bottle the air they would? Don't you know that there would be an American Air-bottling Association? And don't you know that they would allow thousands and millions to die for want of breath, if they could not pay for air? I am not blaming anybody. I am just telling how it is.
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.
Aristotle
As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
Madison, James
Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith