#property

Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long that they have come to esteem the religious, learned and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#materialism #possessions #property #values #men

[T]he power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you, their children. And therefore, though you did not kill or thieve, yet you hold that cursed thing in your hand by the power of the sword; and so you justify the wicked deeds of your fathers, and that sin of your father shall be visited upon the head of you and your children to the third and fourth generation, and longer too, till your bloody and thieving power be rooted out of the land. ↗

— Winstanley

#theft #men

At one time in the world there were woods that no one owned ↗

— Cormac McCarthy

#nature #property #nature

Water belongs to us all. Nature did not make the sun one person's property, nor air, nor water, cool and clear. ↗

— Michael Simpson

#property #sun #water #nature

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

#property-rights #respect

Giving women education, work, the ability to control their own income, inherit and own property, benefits the society. If a woman is empowered, her children and her family will be better off. If families prosper, the village prospers, and eventually so does the whole country. ↗

— Isabel Allende

#benefits #better #better off #children #control

Property may be destroyed and money may lose its purchasing power; but, character, health, knowledge and good judgement will always be in demand under all conditions. ↗

— Roger Babson

#character #conditions #demand #destroyed #good

To kill a relative of whom you are tired is something. But to inherit his property afterwards, that is genuine pleasure. ↗

— Honore de Balzac

#genuine #his #inherit #kill #pleasure

Property is not the sacred right. When a rich man becomes poor it is a misfortune, it is not a moral evil. When a poor man becomes destitute, it is a moral evil, teeming with consequences and injurious to society and morality. ↗

— Lord Acton

#consequences #destitute #evil #injurious #man

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

#best #colonists #defend #first #liberty