It should be remembered that the foundation of the social contract is property; and its first condition, that every one should be maintained in the peaceful possession of what belongs to him. — Jean-Baptiste Rousseau
All sentient beings should have at least one right—the right not to be treated as property — Gary L. Francione
Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it — Karl Marx
Government has no other end, but the preservation of property. — John Locke
The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. — John Adams
So great moreover is the regard of the law for private property, that it will not authorize the least violation of it; no, not even for the general good of the whole community. — William Blackstone
The fifth amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees that no private property shall be taken for a public use without the payment of just compensation. — Elton Gallegly
Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. — Frederic Bastiat
Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can. — Samuel Adams
Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others is claiming the right to treat human beings as chattel. — Ayn Rand
A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you. — Ramsey Clark
Short Property Rights Quotes
Your rights matter, because you never know when you're going to need them. — Edward Snowden
An expropriating property protector (the state, through taxation) is a contradiction in terms — Hans-Hermann Hoppe
One's right to life, liberty, and property depends on the outcome of no election. — Robert H. Jackson
I am what is mine. Personality is the original personal property. — Norman O. Brown
Every right implies a responsibility; Every opportunity, an obligation, Every possession, a duty. — John D. Rockefeller
Top 10 Property Rights Quotes
When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. — Frederic Bastiat
To consider judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. — Thomas Jefferson
I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution. — Thomas Jefferson
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. — Abraham Lincoln
The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. — James Madison
When the brain is whole, the unified consciousness of the left and right hemispheres adds up to more than the individual properties of the separate hemispheres. — Roger Wolcott Sperry
Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government. — James Madison
So as far as Serbia is concerned, it does not have the right to influence the privatization or to claim any property, because Kosovo is a former member of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. — Ibrahim Rugova
The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. — George Washington
Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death. — James Madison
Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life. Tip top if you must, but take the step.
Intellectual Property Rights Quotes
Man was born to be rich, or grow rich by use of his faculties, by the union of thought with nature. Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
If China wants to be a constructive, active player in the world economy, it's got to respect intellectual property rights or it makes it pretty impossible to do business with them. — Dan Glickman
Forget land, buildings, or machines-the real source of wealth today is intelligence, applied intelligence. We talk glibly of "intellectual property" without taking on board what it really means. It isn't just patent rights and brand names; it is the brains of the place. — Charles Handy
Live your life. Take chances. Be crazy. Don't wait. Because right now is the oldest you've ever been and the youngest you'll ever be again.
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. — Alex Kozinski
We were proposing, in a sense, that the rest of the world be made safe for American ideas, as they adopted intellectual property rights that gave patent protection to our very innovative economy. — Jeffrey Sachs
For us, not cooperating in the monopoly regimes of intellectual property rights and patents and biodiversity - saying "no" to patents on life, and developing intellectual ideas of resistance - is very much a continuation of Gandhian satyagraha. It is, for me, keeping life free in its diversity. — Vandana Shiva
If things go wrong, don’t go with them.
Stealing music is not right, and I can understand people being very upset about their intellectual property being stolen. — Steve Jobs
For the West, the enemy was not "socialism" but capitalism. How to tame and subdue the polar bear, how to take over the talent, the science, the technology, how to buy out the human capital, how to acquire the intellectual property rights? — Michel Chossudovsky
Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Industry's at war. I think it's about control. You can make all of the financial arguments that the industry has been shooting itself in the foot, but it is an industry built on a foundation of ownership and exploitation of intellectual property rights. — Don Rose
Private Property Rights Quotes
The true test of one's commitment to liberty and private property rights doesn't come when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we agree. The true test comes when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we disagree. — Walter E. Williams
The right to private property meant at the same time the right and duty to be personally concerned about your own well-being, to be personally concerned about your family's income, to be personally concerned about your future. This is hard work. — Mikhail Khodorkovsky
The issuing power [of money] should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. — Thomas Jefferson
Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyways.
We need to keep a very keen eye on our own government. It's getting too rich and redistributing wealth is a sure way of robbing us of our private property rights and other rights along with them. — Richard Pipes
Private property is a means, and neither its abolition nor its unrestricted right should be an end in itself. — Kenneth E. Boulding
Therefore the dignity of the human person normally demands the right to the use of earthly goods as the natural foundation for a livelihood; and to that right corresponds the fundamental obligation to grant private property, as far as possible, to all. — Pope Pius XI
Stop being afraid of what could go wrong, and start being excited of what could go right.
Knowledge-like the sky- is never private property. No teacher has a right to withhold it from anyone who asks for it. Teaching is the art of sharing. — Abraham Joshua Heschel
If "Thou shalt not covet," and "Thou shalt not steal," were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free. — John Adams
The invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the Constituents. — James Madison
Whenever there is a conflict between human rights and property rights, human rights must prevail. — Abraham Lincoln
Property Owner Quotes
The Tories always hold the view that the state is an apparatus for the protection of the swag of the property owners ... Christ drove the money changers out of the temple, but you inscribe their title deed on the altar cloth. — Aneurin Bevan
Property-owners are the most energetic flag-waggers and patriots in every country, but only so long as they enjoy their possessions: to safeguard those they desert God, King and Country in a twinkling. — C. L. R. James
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
Knowledge is having the right answer. Intelligence is asking the right questions.
No one can feel as the owner of the country and no one can feel excluded from the right of property. We must all suffer Colombia. — Alvaro Uribe
But assuming the same premises, to wit, that all men are equal by the law of nature and of nations, the right of property in slaves falls to the ground; for one who is equal to another cannot be the owner or property of that other. — William H. Seward
The value of land must, in the future, be assessed on its yield of potable water. Those property-owners with a constant source of pure water already have an economically-valuable "product" from their land, and need look no further for a source of income. — Bill Mollison
In six short years, small business owners and family farmers will once again be assessed a tax on the value of their property at the time of their death, despite having paid taxes throughout their lifetime. — Doc Hastings
When there's deflation, it means that although most markets are shrinking and people have less to spend, the 1% that hold the 99% in debt are getting all the growth in wealth and income. Deflation means that income is being transferred to the 1%, that is, to the creditors and property owners. — Michael Hudson
Consider what importance to society the chastity of women is. Upon that all the property in the world depends. We hang a thief for stealing a sheep; but the unchastity of a woman transfers sheep and farm and all from the right owner. — Samuel Johnson
The eyes have a property in things and territories not named in any title-deeds, and are the owners of our choicest possessions. — Amos Bronson Alcott
Property Law Quotes
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. — Frederic Bastiat
[Friendship] is a relationship that has no formal shape, there are no rules or obligations or bonds as in marriage or the family, it is held together by neither law nor property nor blood, there is no glue in it but mutual liking. It is therefore rare. — Wallace Stegner
No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session. — Mark Twain
The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. — Winston Churchill
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, . . . neither persons nor property will be safe. — Frederick Douglass
Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property... Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them. — Thomas Paine
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. — Jefferson Davis
Does capital punishment tend to the security of the people? By no means. It hardens the hearts of men, and makes the loss of life appear light to them; and it renders life insecure, inasmuch as the law holds out that property is of greater value than life. — Elizabeth Fry
Civilization is built on a number of ultimate principles... respect for human life, the punishment of crimes against property and persons, the equality of all good citizens before the law... or, in a word justice. — Max Nordau
I told my mother-in-law that my house was her house, and she said, 'Get the hell off my property.' — Joan Rivers
Legal Rights Quotes
Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims. — Ayn Rand
The right to be able to speak openly and confidentially to another is, at times, codified legally if not ethically. — Gad Saad
There have been times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal. Sometimes to do the right thing you have to break the law. — Edward Snowden
My feminism, as intended by me, extends to empowering women to make legal choices, not to judge the legal choices they make. My fight is for rights. — Maajid Nawaz
All I did in Chicago was to exercise my legal right to speak on my own behalf and I was given four years in jail as a result. But I think the most serious injustice perpetrated by the court system in America is the inability of a black man to get a jury of his peers. — Bobby Seale
Well, when I think of steroids I think of an image. You have the advantage over someone, which is a form of cheating. I guess it wouldn't be right unless it was legal for everybody. Reason it's not legal for everybody is because it can hurt people seriously. — Evander Holyfield
If it is right to be legally married, it is right to be legally divorced ... To be deprived of a Divorce is like being shut up in prison because someone attempted to kill you. It is just as honorable to get out of matrimonial trouble legally, as to be freed from any other wrong. — Mary Edwards Walker
Prior to Roe , ... whether one could obtain a legal abortion in the face of an unwanted pregnancy was a crap shoot. For 30 years now, it's been a constitutionally guaranteed right — David Garrow
We must respect each other's right to choose a collective destiny, and the opportunity to develop the legal and political rights for Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples so that we may enjoy the right to maintain our culture, our heritage and our land, as a united Australia. — Jackie Huggins
The makers of our Constitution . . . conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. — Louis D. Brandeis
Property Ownership Quotes
Bitcoin is the most difficult property that the human race possesses or has yet invented to confiscate…I literally have to crack your head open and read your mind to take it…It’s harder to take than every other thing you might own. In fact, it’s exponentially harder. — Michael Saylor
I understand that a man can have everything having nothing and nothing having everything. — Mihai Eminescu
I further promise you, that all my wealth and property will be in Pakistan. I will take ownership of this country and won't be like those leaders who create hideouts abroad — Imran Khan
When people lack jobs, opportunity, and ownership of property they have little or no stake in their communities. — Jack Kemp
I am for socialism, disarmament, and, ultimately, for abolishing the state itself... I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and the sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal. — Roger Nash Baldwin
I've long believed one of the mainsprings of our own liberty has been the widespread ownership of property among our people and the expectation that anyone's child, even from the humblest of families, could grow up to own a business or corporation. — Ronald Reagan
The instinct of ownership is fundamental in man's nature. — William James
The program of liberalism if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property, that is, private ownership of the means of production. — Ludwig von Mises
There can be to the ownership of anything no rightful title which is not derived from the title of the producer and does not rest upon the natural right of the man to himself. — Henry George
Land: A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure. — Ambrose Bierce
Personal Rights Quotes
Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way. — Martin Luther King
Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy. — Aristotle
A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi... has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It's not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for. — Thurgood Marshall
I don’t believe in courtship.It’s a waste of time. If I love the person, I’ll tell her right away. But for you, I’ll make an exception. Just love me now, and I’ll court you forever. — Ferdinand Marcos
The moment a woman comes home to herself, the moment she knows that she has become a person of influence, an artist of her life, a sculptor of her universe, a person with rights and responsibilities who is respected and recognized, the resurrection of the world begins. — Joan D. Chittister
We hear a constant clamor for rights, rights, always rights, but so very little about responsibility. And we have forgotten God. The need now is for selflessness, for a spirit of sacrifice, for a willingness to put aside personal gains for the salvation of the whole Western world. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Those who are right do not argue. Those who argue are not right. — Lao Tzu
A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess. — A. Philip Randolph
When you say to a person of colour, 'When I see you, I don't see you Black; I just see everybody the same' think about that. You don't have the right to say to a person, 'I do not see you as you are; I want to see you as I would be more comfortable seeing you.' — Jane Elliott
Private Property Quotes
Was a great high wall there that tried to stop me. Was a great big sign there said private Property but on the back side it didn't say nothing. That side was made for you and me. — Woody Guthrie
Even if we were not sinful by nature, the sin of having private property would suffice to condemn us before God; for that which he gives us freely, we appropriate to ourselves. — Huldrych Zwingli
Bitcoin is Digital Property and is going to be adopted as a store of value/asset in every nation that allows citizens to own private property. — Michael Saylor
Food that is necessary for man’s existence is as sacred as life itself. Everything that is indispensable for its preservation is the common property of society as a whole. It is only the surplus that is private property and can be safely left to individual commercial enterprise. — Maximilien Robespierre
Egalitarianism, in every form and shape, is incompatible with the idea of private property. — Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else's resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property. — Milton Friedman
It seems the most logical thing in the world to believe that the natural resources of the Earth, upon which the race depends for food, clothing and shelter, should be owned collectively by the race instead of being the private property of a few social parasites. — Ralph Chaplin
There are drones flying over the air randomly that are recording everything that's happening on what we consider our private property. That type of technology has to stimulate us to think about what is it that we cherish in privacy, and how far we want to protect it and from whom. — Sonia Sotomayor
A government debt is a government claim against personal income and private property - an unpaid tax bill. — Hans F. Sennholz
Individual Rights Quotes
No individual has any right to come into the world and go out of it without leaving behind him distinct and legitimate reasons for having passed through it. — George Washington Carver
Childhood is not a race to see how quickly a child can read, write and count. It is a small window of time to learn and develop at the pace that is right for each individual child. Earlier is not better. — Magda Gerber
No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. — Friedrich Nietzsche
If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health. — Hippocrates
To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today. — Thurgood Marshall
Resistance to tyranny becomes the Christian and social duty of each individual… Continue steadfast and, with a proper sense of your dependence on God, nobly defend those rights which heaven gave, and no man ought to take from us. — John Hancock
Federalism isn’t about states’ rights. It’s about dividing power to better protect individual liberty. — Elizabeth Price Foley
You know, I've never believed, in anything, that you had to have role models who looked like you to do something. If I'd been waiting for a black, female, soviet specialist role model, I'd be still waiting. — Condoleezza Rice
If you are asking me what the individual can do right now, in a political sense, I'd have to say he can't do all that much. Speaking for myself, I am more concerned with the transformation of the individual, which to me is much more important than the so-called political revolution. — William S. Burroughs
We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one. — James Madison
Bitcoin links together 8 billion people, links together a hundred million companies, it synchronizes the world across political jurisdictions, and it returns rationality to the entire financial system, and it returns freedom and property rights to the entire human race. — Michael Saylor
When you construct on the basis of an incorrect moral principle, the result is filth. How can being able to kill other human beings be a right gained? As a liberal, I believe in the unrestricted right to life based on the defence of life, liberty and property. I defend life, biology says that life begins with conception. — Javier Milei
The sale of human organs is merchandise. My first property is my body. Why am I not going to be able to dispose of my body? There are 7,500 persons suffering as they await transplants so something isn’t working right. We are seeking market mechanisms to solve this problem. — Javier Milei
I just want everyone to know that 20,000 gun laws in the United States are unconstitutional. They infringe on your right to protect your life, the lives of your loved ones, and your property. — Michael Badnarik
Property, the right to enjoy the fruits of one's labor, the right to work, to develop, to exercise one's faculties, according to one's own understanding, without the state intervening otherwise than by its protective action; this is what is meant by liberty — Frederic Bastiat
The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy. One's right to life, liberty and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly may not be submitted to vote; they depend on no elections. — Robert H. Jackson
There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. — Gore Vidal
Nothing appeals to children more than justice, and they should be taught in the nursery to "play fair" in games, to respect each other's property and rights, to give credit to others, and not to take too much credit to themselves. — Emily Post
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. — Joseph Story
I consider the war of America against Britain as the country's war, the public's war, or the war of the people in their own behalf, for the security of their natural rights, and the protection of their own property. — Thomas Paine
Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated. — Thomas Jefferson
The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management. — Thomas Jefferson
All over this land women have no political existence. Laws pass over our heads that we can not unmake. Our property is taken from us without our consent. The babes we bear in anguish and carry in our arms are not ours. — Lucy Stone
The dichotomy between personal liberties and property rights is a false one. Property does not have rights. People have rights. — Potter Stewart
The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves. — John Locke
Human beings are not property. On the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, let us reaffirm the inherent dignity of all men, women and children. And let us redouble our efforts so that the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - 'no one shall be held in slavery or servitude' - ring true. — Kofi Annan
Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty. — John Adams
Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would. — John Adams
Do I have a problem with Larry Ellison buying Sun? No, that's part of the capitalist system. As soon as we go public we're for sale, that's part of the deal. And do I have a problem with him exercising his intellectual property rights? No, I don't have a problem with that. Would it be how we necessarily ran and operated? Obviously not. — Scott Mcnealy
Since there is no such entity as 'the public,' since the public is merely a number of individuals, the idea that 'the public interest' supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others. — Ayn Rand
In Conclusion
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