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James Madison2 quotes
The most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. — James Madison · 1787The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results. — James Madison · 1787John Locke2 quotes
The great and chief end, therefore, of men's uniting into commonwealths and putting themselves under government is the preservation of their property. — John Locke · 1690Man...has by nature a power...to preserve his property—that is, his life, liberty, and estate—against the injuries and attempts of other men. — John Locke · 1690Alexis de Tocqueville1 quote
I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken a stronger hold on the affections of men, and where a profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1835Andrew Carnegie1 quote
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. — Andrew Carnegie · 1889Arthur Young1 quote
Give a man the secure possession of bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden; give him nine years lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert. — Arthur Young · 1792Benjamin Franklin1 quote
All Property indeed, except the Savage’s temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents & all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity & the Uses of it. — Benjamin Franklin · 1783Crazy Horse1 quote
One does not sell the earth upon which the people walk. — Crazy Horse · 1970Friedrich Hayek1 quote
The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not. — Friedrich Hayek · 1944Henry David Thoreau1 quote
By avarice and selfishness, and a grovelling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property...the landscape is deformed. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854Jean-Jacques Rousseau1 quote
The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said, "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1755John Stuart Mill1 quote
No man made the land. It is the original inheritance of the whole species. Its appropriation is wholly a question of general expediency. When private property in land is not expedient, it is unjust. — John Stuart Mill · 1848Johnny1 quote
I'm gonna give you to the count of 10, to get your ugly, yella, no-good keister off my property, before I pump your guts full of lead! 1...2...10! — Johnny · 1990Karl Marx1 quote
The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. — Karl Marx · 1848Margaret Mitchell1 quote
Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything, for 'tis the only thing in this world that lasts...'Tis the only thing worth working for, worth fighting for—worth dying for. — Margaret Mitchell · 1936Nathaniel Hawthorne1 quote
What we call real estate—the solid ground to build a house on—is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests. — Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1851Pierre-Joseph Proudhon1 quote
Property is theft. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon · 1840Pope Pius XII1 quote
Private property is a natural fruit of labor, a product of intense activity of man, acquired trough his energetic determination to ensure and develop with his own strength his own existence and that of his family, and to create for himself and his own an existence of just freedom, not only economic, but also political, cultural and religious. — Pope Pius XII · 1944R.H. Tawney1 quote
Private property is a necessary institution, at least in a fallen world; men work more and dispute less when goods are private than when they are common. But it is to be tolerated as a concession to human frailty, not applauded as desirable in itself. — R.H. Tawney · 1926Tecumseh1 quote
Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the clouds and the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children? — Tecumseh · 1810Theodore Roosevelt1 quote
My position as regards the moneyed interests can be put in a few words. In every civilized society property rights must be carefully safeguarded; ordinarily, and in the great majority of cases, human rights and property rights are fundamentally and in the long run identical; but when it clearly appears that there is a real conflict between them, human rights must have the upper hand, for property belongs to man and not man to property. — Theodore Roosevelt · 1910