Property Rights Quotes

“A man who chooses between drinking a glass of milk and a glass of a solution of potassium cyanide does not choose between two beverages; he chooses between life and death. A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.”
― Ludwig von Mises

“Property breeds lawyers, I said, forbearing to add a belief that unfortunately property now seemed the only thing palpable enough to demand the respect of governments, and perhaps was the generating clout against encroachments on the spiritual protections for speech, assembly, and so on. It might turn out that without the right to possess we are not sure we really have the right to speak and to be.”
― Arthur Miller, Salesman in Beijing

“many scientists have interfered with science in precisely the way courts always worried tissue donors might do. “It’s ironic,” she told me. “The Moore court’s concern was, if you give a person property rights in their tissues, it would slow down research because people might withhold access for money. But the Moore decision backfired—it just handed that commercial value to researchers.” According to Andrews and a dissenting California Supreme Court judge, the ruling didn’t prevent commercialization; it just took patients out of the equation and emboldened scientists to commodify tissues in increasing numbers. Andrews and many others have argued that this makes scientists less likely to share samples and results, which slows research; they also worry that it interferes with health-care delivery.”
― Rebecca Skloot

“Anarcho-capitalism is not by definition libertarian. It is rather a prediction, not a definition.”
― David D. Friedman

“Most of the crimes which disturb the internal peace of society are produced by the restraints which the necessary, but unequal, laws of property have imposed on the appetites of mankind, by confining to a few the possession of those objects that are coveted by many. Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude. In the tumult of civil discord, the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity. The ardor of contention, the pride of victory, the despair of success, the memory of past injuries, and the fear of future dangers, all contribute to inflame the mind, and to silence the voice of pity. From such motives almost every page of history has been stained with civil blood....”
― Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume I

“The best way to protect your ducks from predators like bobcats, foxes, and coyotes is to post up No Trespassing signs. Animals respect property rights, and would rather starve than violate man's law.”
― Jarod Kintz, BearPaw Duck And Meme Farm presents: Two Ducks Brawling Is A Pre-Pillow Fight

“Respect for the rights of others is a lofty principle; but envy is a primal urge (p114)”
― Madeleine K. Albright, Fascism: A Warning

“Capitalism is not a form of government. Capitalism is a symptom of freedom. It is the result of individual rights, which include property rights.”
― A.E. Samaan

“Any so-called 'radical' strategy that seeks to empower the disempowered in the realm of social reproduction by opening up that realm to monetisation and market forces is headed in exactly the wrong direction. Providing financial literacy classes for the populace at large will simply expose that population predatory practices as they seek to manage their own investment portfolios like minnows swimming in a sea of sharks. Providing microcredit and microfinance facilities encourages people to participate in the market economy but does so in such a way as to maximise the energy they have to expend while minimising their returns. Providing legal title for land property ownership in the hope that this will bring economic and social stability to the lives of the marginalised will almost certainly lead in the long run to their dispossession and eviction from that space and place they already hold through customary use rights.”
― David Harvey, Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism

“The only legitimate purpose of government is to protect the lives and property of its citizens.”
― Mike Klepper

“Property rights are the foundation necessary to explain the role of non-aggression. In other words, the non-aggression principle is simply another of way of saying individuals have a right against aggression from others as a result of property. Non-aggression alone does not tell us what property rights people have, or why they have these rights to begin with.”
― Daniel Alexander Brackins, Private Property, Law, and the State

“You've been taught to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's". Unlearn that lesson. Free men would not permit Caesar to exist.”
― Mike Klepper

“Because rights are only claims against other people, and not claims on other people and their property, rights end when they infringe on the rights of others.”
― Daniel Alexander Brackins, Private Property, Law, and the State

“Nowhere did our Founders lay out a plan for our government to attempt to ensure equal outcomes for citizens at the expense of those who excelled in the American environment of freedom and liberty. It was not their intent to create a system that allowed government to punish one class in order to unjustly reward another class to “level the playing field“ while at the same time buying votes.”
― Daniel Rundquist

“When men say, for instance (by a false metaphor), that each member of the public should feel himself an owner of public property – such as a Town Park – and should therefore respect it as his own, they are saying something which all our experience proves to be completely false. No man feels of public property that it is his own; no man will treat it with the care or the affection of a thing which is his own; still less can a man express himself through the use of a thing which is not his own, but shared in common with a mass of other men.”
― Hilaire Belloc, An Essay on the Restoration of Property

“It may be said very abstractly that in personality all persons are equal. But this is an empty tautological proposition, in logic identified with the law of mere identity or A = A. This is so because a person abstractly considered is not as yet separate from others, and has no distinguishing attribute.
Equality is the abstract identity set up by the mere understanding. Upon this principle, mere impoverished reflecting thought, or, in other words, spirit in its middle ranges, is apt to fall, when before it there arises the relation of identity to difference. This equalit would be only the identity of abstract persons as such, and would exclude all reference to posession, which is the basis of inequality. Sometimes the demand is made for equality in the division of the soil of the earth, and even other kinds of wealth. The theory of a pious, friendly brotherhood of men who are to possess all goods in common, and to banish the principle of private ownership, easily presents itself to one who fails to understand the nature of freedom of spirit and nature of right, through mistaking their definite phases. Claims of a demand for equality in divisions of wealth are superficial, because the differences of wealth are due not only to the accidents of external nature but also to the infinite variety and difference of mental ability and character.”
― Hegel

“My property rights are there! Work is therefore the certain foundation, the pure source, the holy origin of the rights of property. Otherwise the self is not primordial and original property, and the faculties, an expansion of the self and the organs put to its service, do not belong to it, which would be intolerable.”
― Gustave de Molinari

“The legal system protects property rights, allowing entrepreneurs to innovate and take risks.”
― Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.

“To mitigate complications and aid in the procedure of devolution of assets after death, a ‘will’ has to be well planned and drafted.”
― Henrietta Newton Martin

“The country you live in impacts nearly every aspect of your life. From the factors I have observed, this impact can be broadly categorized into opportunities and trust. In Richland, individuals’ lives are replete with opportunity and there is little reason not to trust the institutions in their lives, yet not everything is as perfect as it seems on a mental, emotional, and cultural level. In Poorland, the daily fight for survival takes precedence over most other elements of life and trust levels are low. Even the ground a person lives on can be taken away at a moment’s notice with little opportunity or basis for defense.”
― Danielle Hawa Tarigha, Uplift and Empower: A Guide To Understanding Extreme Poverty and Poverty Alleviation

“A man's house is his castle; and whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle.”
― James Otis

“The selfish scheme called “property rights” has superseded human rights and created four times more useless work than is required to produce and distribute all the comforts and luxuries of life.”
― Lucy Parsons

“It took me a long time to understand why so much that surrounded me was too ugly to tolerate without protest. But eventually I learned the reason. I saw that the conduct of my fellow-men could not be otherwise than disappointing, in fact parasitical and corrupt, and that most of our troubles emanated from a cause which manifestly would grow worse so long as we put up with it. That cause was Capitalism...The motivating principle of business (though not openly confessed), when summed up, meant: "Get yours; never mind the other fellow." I saw, too, that our law-makers and judges of the meaning of the law put property rights first and left human rights to shift for themselves.”
― Art Young, Art Young: His Life and Times

“I protest that in criticizing property, or rather the whole mass of institutions of which property is the pivot, I have never intended either to attack individual rights, based upon existing laws, or to contest the legitimacy of acquired possessions, or to demand an arbitrary division of goods, or to place any obstacle to the free and regular acquisition, by sale and exchange, of property, or even to forbid or suppress, by sovereign degree, ground rent and interest on capital.

I think that all these manifestations of human activity should remain free and voluntary for all: I ask for them no modifications, restrictions or suppressions, other than those which result naturally and of necessity from the universalisation of the principle of reciprocity which I propose.”
― Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

“Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor;
by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources.
This process is the origin of property.
But it is also true that a man may live and satisfy his wants
by seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others.
This process is the origin of plunder.”
― Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

“The possession of illegal properties is a poison to one's legal possession.”
― Joshua A Adebodun, Re-Exploring Genesis: Uncover the Author's Intents, Gain Clarity, and Deepen Your Faith.

“Property disputes don’t destroy land, they destroy families, wealth, and peace. The real war is fought in courtrooms, not on fields.”
― Sree Krishna Seelam, Indian Property & Real Estate Law for A Common Man: Master basics of Property Law in 2 hours.

“When governments control everything, your perceived or glorified wealth is just an illusion. Attaining true generational wealth requires working rules of law, disaster-proof property rights, and assets that the constituted authority can't just take away. Until you have these, you are still at the mercy of the system - and, it was created to put you in check whenever you want to have a contrary opinion.”
― Olawale Daniel, Mastering the Crypto World: Understanding and Trading Cryptocurrencies for Profits

“The claimed legitimizing devices of political consent or personal labour served only to obscure the unjustifiable seizure of land from the common by the powerful. Other commoners at the time of those seizures had not consented to them, and even if they had done so, their consent could not bind later generations.”
― Peter Vallentyne, The Origins of Left-Libertarianism: An Anthology of Historical Writings

“On this, both right-libertarians and left-libertarians agree...the doctrine of self-ownership. Each person has exclusive ownership of herself [or himself] and nobody has any property rights in another person.”
― Peter Vallentyne, The Origins of Left-Libertarianism: An Anthology of Historical Writings