Home / Topics / Property Rights Quotes

Property Rights Quotes

Browse 266 quotes about Property Rights.

Property Rights Quotes

“Whensoever, therefore, the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society, and either by ambition, fear, folly, or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people, by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into the hands... and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and... provide for their own safety and security.”

Source: Two Treatises of Government: With a Supplement, Patriarcha, by Robert Filmer

“I typically don't use the distinction 'positive' and 'negative' liberty, because negative sounds bad and positive sounds good, and I don't think that the terminology ought to prejudice us one way or the other. So I think the more descriptive term is 'liberty rights' versus 'welfare rights'. So, liberty rights are freedom-of-action type rights, and welfare rights are rights-to-stuff, of various kinds...And, property rights are not rights-to-stuff. I think that's one of the key misunderstandings about property. Property rights are the rights to liberty within your jurisdiction.”

“The only proper, moral purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence - to protect his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to his own property and to the pursuit of his own happiness. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.”

Men Mean Government Purpose Liberty Moral Rights Violence Protect Property Pursuit Property Rights Physical Violence

Book:The Virtue of Selfishness

Source: The Virtue of Selfishness

“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.”

Source: Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States: With a Preliminary Review of the Constitutional History of the Colonies and States, Before the Adoption of the Constitution

“If we as a society want to cure unemployment, raise real wages, and in other ways improve our economy, we will base public policy on private property rights, the non-aggression principle and the law of free association. In the free and prosperous society, everyone may do precisely as he pleases, provided only that he does not initiate violence against non-aggressors.”

Source: Labor Economics from a Free Market Perspective: Employing the Unemployable

“The story of the Western world since 1945 is that, invited to choose between freedom and government 'security,' large numbers of people vote to dump freedom every time - the freedom to make your own decisions about health care, education, property rights, and a ton of other stuff.”

People World Stories Government Care Stuff Decision Numbers Rights Security Vote Property Western Health Care Invited Large Numbers Property Rights Dump Western World

Author:Mark Steyn

“When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”

“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.”

Way Needs Government Eye Wealth Rich Rights Property Private Property Property Rights Robbing

Author:Richard Pipes

“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.”

People Needs Giving Law Liberty Rights Property West Guarantees Continents Rule Of Law Pessimistic Private Property Property Rights Personal Liberty

Author:Walter E. Williams

“[Concerning monotheistic religions] The only thing these hysterical cults have in common is the belief that this world will be consumed, and deservedly so, when the moment is ripe. They also, all of them, profess a great disdain for earthly possessions. Yet they pass the intervening time in haggling over the most trivial and paltry property rights, over caves and rocks and disputable pieces of archeological rubbish.”

World Moments Belief Common Pieces Rights Rocks This World Property Possession Cult Caves Consumed Ripe Rubbish Property Rights Disdain Hysterical Intervening Earthly Possessions

Author:Christopher Hitchens

“Trade unions infringe upon the property rights of company owners.”

Company Rights Trade Property Unions Owners Property Rights Trade Unions

Author:Barry Goldwater

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

“A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”

Book:Jefferson on Freedom: Wisdom, Advice, and Hints on Freedom, Democracy, and the American Way

Source: Jefferson on Freedom: Wisdom, Advice, and Hints on Freedom, Democracy, and the American Way

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.”

“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.”

War Government Spirit Certain Politics Wish Freedom Liberty Alive Valuable Libertarian Tyranny Resistance Occasions Presidential Revolutionary Patriotic Anti War Patriot Gun Control Dissent Freedom And Liberty Freedom Liberty Our Founding Fathers Property Rights American Revolution Limited Government Democracies Have Us Founding Fathers Right To Bear Arms Forefathers Bearing Arms American Government Limiting Government Pro Gun Libertarian Party Founding Fathers Gun Limited Freedom Political Will Political Freedom Eternal Vigilance Great Libertarian Liberty And Justice America Freedom Price Of Freedom Limiting Freedom Resistance To Change American Freedom Tyranny Founding Fathers Democracy In America Government And Politics Government Politics Government Tyranny Controlling Government Liberty And Justice For All Voting Founding Fathers Political Wisdom Minority Government Divided Government

Book:The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence 1786-1787

Source: The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence 1786-1787

“The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.”

Book:A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)

Source: A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.”

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”

Source: Selected letters of Thomas Jefferson

“Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.”

“Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.”

Source: The writings of Thomas Jefferson

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

“One of the movements we have developed is to say that, just as intellectual property rights protect the inventions of individuals, common rights are needed to protect the common intellectual heritage of indigenous peoples. These are rights that are recognized through the Convention on Biological Diversity. We are working to make sure that they become foundations of our jurisprudence.”

Individual Common Rights Movement Needed Protect Diversity Intellectual Foundation Property Invention Heritage Conventions Indigenous Property Rights Intellectual Property Indigenous People Jurisprudence

Author:Vandana Shiva

“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.”

Ideas Rights Diversity Intellectual Property Resistance Developing Regimes Monopoly Saying No Property Rights Patents Continuation Biodiversity Intellectual Property Satyagraha Cooperating

Author:Vandana Shiva

“Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.”

Source: The History of Freedom: Great Event

“We want to have trade agreements that give us a level playing field, get other countries to respect the rule of law, intellectual property rights, lower their taxes to our barriers, that`s good for us, and that is something that I do believe that President [Donald] Trump agrees with.”

“I have an admiration, even though I'm not likely to do that sort of thing myself, for [Ayn] Roark's behavior when he decided that his design was not being followed - which was a gross violation, by the way, of private property rights, because the building was his.”

Way Rights Design Building Behavior Decided Property Admiration Gross Violation Private Property Property Rights

Author:Murray Bookchin

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

“You have to have a government to provide you with legal order, with stability, enforcement of property rights, enforcement of contracts, definition of rules and regulations - the rules of the game, so to speak - and to provide certain shared goods and services, public services. Several people have tried to estimate this and they come out with figures like government spending at 15% of GDP. In the modern world it has gone to 40% or above. So we are way beyond the optimal, and that is easier to say than what the optimum is.”

“Unless we can act collectively, there would be no way to defend ourselves, no way to define or enforce property rights. We couldn't curb congestion or pollution or build and maintain public infrastructure.”

Way Would Be Rights Property Pollution Infrastructure Property Rights Curb Congestion

Author:Robert H. Frank

“The state should never have instituted and enforced legal property rights in persons, and should not have been in the business of returning runaway slaves to their "rightful owners." The whole institution of property in human beings was an unjust social institution and should not have been maintained in existence. It is this sort of thought that I'm appealing to at the supranational level.”

Should Humans Persons Has Beens States Whole Social Human Beings Levels Existence Rights Institutions Property Slave Owners Unjust Property Rights Runaway Social Institutions

Author:Thomas Pogge

“Property rights can improve a woman's ability to stand up to violence in the home. You might think education and employment are important because they give women exit options, but property is as well. Give women equal property rights to inherited land, then they have an asset they can take out of the marriage. This gives husbands strong incentives to not beat them.”

Thinking Giving Wells Important Home Might Strong Ability Rights Violence Land Husband Equal Beats Property Employment Assets Incentives Exit Property Rights

Author:Martha C. Nussbaum

“Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.”

Men Life Matter Earth Walks Rights Respect Property Surround Private Property Property Rights Personal Rights

Book:The Trumpet of Conscience

Source: The Trumpet of Conscience

“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”

Source: A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”

“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.”

“Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself.”

Men Persons Liberty Self Esteem Philosophical Property Libertarian Every Man Ownership Private Property Property Rights Individual Rights Libertarian Party Every Man For Himself Property Ownership Enlightenment Thinkers

Book:The Locke Reader: Selections from the Works of John Locke with a General Introduction and Commentary

Source: The Locke Reader: Selections from the Works of John Locke with a General Introduction and Commentary

“The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property.”

Men Reason Property Reason Why Preservation Private Property Property Rights

Book:Two treatises of government

Source: Two treatises of government

“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.”

“Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.”

Men Persons Government Political Politics Liberty Opinion Safe Property Possession Faculty Excess Property Rights

Book:1829-1836

Source: 1829-1836

“The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.”

Source: Selected Writings of James Madison

“The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.”

Persons Government Liberty Rights Objects Property Protection Property Rights Individual Rights Constitutional Rights Unalienable Rights

Book:Writings

Source: Writings

“As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.”

Men May Said Government Liberty Rights Property Socialism Freedom And Liberty Freedom Liberty Private Property Property Rights Liberty And Justice Tyranny Founding Fathers Property Ownership

Book:Selected Writings of James Madison

Source: Selected Writings of James Madison

“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.”

Source: The Letters of John and Abigail Adams

“Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.”

Real Liberty Mankind Property Property Rights

Author:John Adams

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Source: Mencken Chrestomathy

“The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.”

“If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.”

Ifs Would Be Teach Economy Civilization Property Linked Private Property Property Rights

Book:Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War

Source: Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War

“Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone.”

Want States Government Forget Liberty Economics Libertarian Expenses Free Market Second Amendment Property Rights

Author:Frederic Bastiat

“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.”

Source: The Law

“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.”

Source: Samuel Adams: selections from his writings