{
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  "site": {
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  "name": "private property",
  "slug": "private-property",
  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/private-property",
  "heading": "Quotes about private property",
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  "markdown": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/private-property.md",
  "quotes_count": 30,
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    "name": "money",
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    "heading": "Quotes about money"
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      "slug": "we-say-that",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/g-chesterton/the-man-who-was-thursday/we-say-that",
      "text": "We say that the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men; my heart goes out to them. They accept the essential ideal of man; they merely seek it wrongly. Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea of personal possession.",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "G. Chesterton",
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        "title": "The Man Who Was Thursday",
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      "slug": "come-on-in-the",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey/the-journey-home/come-on-in-the",
      "text": "Come on in. The earth, like the sun, like the air, belongs to everyone — and to no one.",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "Edward Abbey",
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      "book": {
        "title": "The Journey Home",
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      "slug": "one-hundred-and",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aldo-leopold/a-sand-county-almanac/one-hundred-and",
      "text": "One hundred and twenty acres, according to the County Clerk, is the extent of my worldly domain. But the County Clerk is a sleepy fellow, who never looks at his record books before nine o’clock. What they would show at daybreak is the question here at issue. Books or no books, it is a fact, patent both to my dog and myself, that at daybreak I am the sole owner of all the acres I can walk over. It is not only boundaries that disappear, but also the thought of being bounded.",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "Aldo Leopold",
        "slug": "aldo-leopold",
        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aldo-leopold"
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      "book": {
        "title": "A Sand County Almanac",
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        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/aldo-leopold/a-sand-county-almanac"
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        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aldo_Leopold#%22May:_Back_from_the_Argentine,%22_%22June:_The_Alder_Fork,%22_%22July:_Great_Possessions,%22_and_%22July:_Prairie_Birthday%22",
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      "slug": "the-means-of-production",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-kropotkin/the-conquest-of-bread/the-means-of-production",
      "text": "The means of production being the collective work of humanity, the product should be the collective property of the race. Individual appropriation is neither just nor serviceable. All belongs to all. All things are for all men, since all men have need of them, since all men have worked in the measure of their strength to produce them, and since it is not possible to evaluate every one's part in the production of the world's wealth. All things are for all. Here is an immense stock of tools and implements; here are all those iron slaves which we call machines, which saw and plane, spin and weave for us, unmaking and remaking, working up raw matter to produce the marvels of our time. But nobody has the right to seize a single one of these machines and say, \"This is mine; if you want to use it you must pay me a tax on each of your products,\" any more than the feudal lord of medieval times had the right to say to the peasant, \"This hill, this meadow belong to me, and you must pay me a tax on every sheaf of corn you reap, on every rick you build.\" All is for all! If the man and the woman bear their fair share of work, they have a right to their fair share of all that is produced by all, and that share is enough to secure them well-being. No more of such vague formulas as \"The Right to work,\" or \"To each the whole result of his labour.\" What we proclaim is The Right to Well-Being: Well-Being for All!",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "Peter Kropotkin",
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        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-kropotkin"
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      "book": {
        "title": "The Conquest of Bread",
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        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-kropotkin/the-conquest-of-bread"
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    {
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      "slug": "there-is-not",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-kropotkin/the-conquest-of-bread/there-is-not",
      "text": "There is not even a thought, or an invention, which is not common property, born of the past and the present. Thousands of inventors, known and unknown, who have died in poverty, have co-operated in the invention of each of these machines which embody the genius of man.",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "Peter Kropotkin",
        "slug": "peter-kropotkin",
        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-kropotkin"
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        "title": "The Conquest of Bread",
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      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/the-restaurant-at-the-end-of-the-universe/i-wonder-who",
      "text": "\"I wonder who this ship belongs to anyway,\" said Arthur. \"Me,\" said Zaphod. \"No. Who it really belongs to.\" \"Really me,\" insisted Zaphod, \"look, property is theft, right? Therefore theft is property. Therefore this ship is mine, OK?\" \"Tell the ship that,\" said Arthur.",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "Douglas Adams",
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        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams"
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        "title": "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe",
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        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/douglas-adams/the-restaurant-at-the-end-of-the-universe"
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        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Chapter_20",
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      "slug": "when-the-possessions",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/wendell-berry/the-long-legged-house/when-the-possessions",
      "text": "When the possessions and households of citizens are no longer honored by the acts, as well as the principles, of their government, then the concentration camp ceases to be one of the possibilities of human nature and becomes one of its likelihoods.",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "Wendell Berry",
        "slug": "wendell-berry",
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      "book": {
        "title": "The Long-Legged House",
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      "slug": "this-is-the",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-steinbeck/the-grapes-of-wrath/this-is-the",
      "text": "This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning—from \"I\" to \"we\". If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into \"I\", and cuts you off forever from the \"we\".",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "John Steinbeck",
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      "book": {
        "title": "The Grapes of Wrath",
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        {
          "name": "solidarity",
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      "slug": "the-tenant-pondered",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-steinbeck/the-grapes-of-wrath/the-tenant-pondered",
      "text": "The tenant pondered. \"Funny thing how it is. If a man owns a little property, that property is him, it's part of him, and it's like him. If he owns property only so he can walk on it and handle it and be sad when it isn't doing well, and feel fine when the rain falls on it, that property is him, and some way he's bigger because he owns it. Even if he isn't successful he's big with his property. That is so.\" And the tenant pondered more. \"But let a man get property he doesn't see, or can't take time to get his fingers in, or can't be there to walk on it—why, then the property is the man. He can't do what he wants, he can't think what he wants. The property is the man, stronger than he is. And he is small, not big. Only his possessions are big—and he's the servant of his property. That is so, too.",
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        "name": "John Steinbeck",
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      "slug": "the-land-company",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-steinbeck/the-grapes-of-wrath/the-land-company",
      "text": "The land company — that's the bank when it has land — wants tractors, not families on the land. Is a tractor bad? Is the power that turns the long furrows wrong? If this tractor were ours it would be good — not mine, but ours. If our tractor turned the long furrows of our land, it would be good. Not my land, but ours. We could love that tractor then as we have loved this land when it was ours. But this tractor does two things — it turns the land and turns us off the land. There is little difference between this tractor and a tank. The people are driven, intimidated, hurt by both.",
      "language": "en",
      "author": {
        "name": "John Steinbeck",
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          "name": "technology",
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      "slug": "only-a-ghost",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand/atlas-shrugged/only-a-ghost",
      "text": "\"Only a ghost can exist without material property; only a slave can work with no right to the product of his effort. The doctrine that 'human rights' are superior to 'property rights' simply means that some human beings have the right to make property out of others; since the competent have nothing to gain from the incompetent, it means the right of the incompetent to own their betters and to use them as productive cattle.\"",
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      "author": {
        "name": "Ayn Rand",
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        "title": "Atlas Shrugged",
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      "slug": "who-is-the",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand/atlas-shrugged/who-is-the",
      "text": "\"Who is the public? What does it hold as its good? There was a time when men believed that 'the good' was a concept to be defined by a code of moral values and that no man had the right to seek his good through the violation of the rights of another. If it is now believed that my fellow men may sacrifice me in any manner they please for the sake of whatever they believe to be their own good, if they believe that they may seize my property simply because they need it—well, so does any burglar. There is only this difference: the burglar does not ask me to sanction his act.\"",
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      "author": {
        "name": "Ayn Rand",
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      "book": {
        "title": "Atlas Shrugged",
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        "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/ayn-rand/atlas-shrugged"
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      "slug": "property-has-always",
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      "text": "Property has always been the central consideration of the United States government, but it has become even more so over time. Between the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, to provide just one obvious, and in some ways, silly, example (silly because all of the terms are seemingly obvious, yet in fact nearly impossible to adequately define) and the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1868, the inalienable right with which men [sic] are self-evidently endowed by their Creator, and which may not be abridged by the State, changed from \"Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,\" to life, liberty, and property. The Fourteenth Amendment, passed during the KKK's maiden reign of terror, ostensibly to protect the rights of blacks from racist state governments, has been used far more often to protect the rights to property: Of the Fourteenth Amendment cases brought before the Supreme Court between 1890 and 1910, only nineteen dealt with the rights of blacks, while two hundred and eighty-eight dealt with the rights of corporations.",
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      "text": "I cannot inquire into whether the abolition of private property is expedient or advantageous. But I am able to recognize that the psychological premisses on which the [system]] is based are an untenable illusion. In abolishing private property we deprive the human love of aggression of one of its instruments, certainly a strong one, though certainly not the strongest, but we have not altered the differences in power and influence which are misused by aggressiveness, nor have we altered anything in its nature. Aggressiveness was not created by property. It reigned almost without limit in primitive times, when property was still very scanty, and it already shows itself in the nursery almost before property has given up its primal, anal form; it forms the basis of every relation of affection and love among people (with the single exception, perhaps, of the mother's relations to her male child).",
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      "slug": "ifness-pursed-his",
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      "text": "Ifness pursed his lips judiciously. “All folk, mercantilists as well as tavern-keepers and musicians, try to relate their work to abstract universals. We mercantilists are highly sensitive to theft, which stabs at our very essence. To steal is to acquire goods by a simple, informal, and inexpensive process. To buy identical goods is tedious, irksome, and costly. Is it any wonder that larceny is popular? Nonetheless it voids the mercantilist’s reasons for being alive; we regard thieves with the same abhorrence that musicians might feel for a fanatic gang which beat bells and gongs whenever musicians played.” Frolitz stifled an ejaculation. Ifness tasted the mug of green cider which Loy had set before him. “To repeat: when a thief steals property he steals life. For a mercantilist I am tolerant of human weakness, and I would not react vigorously to the theft of a day. I would resent the theft of a week; I would kill the thief who stole a year of my life.”",
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      "text": "Land was what they wanted, as if the mere ownership of dirt could turn a peasant into a squire.",
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      "text": "We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it — for a little while.",
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      "text": "We are now approaching a , in which the old economic foundations of monogamy will disappear just as surely as those of its complement, prostitution. Monogamy arose through the concentration of considerable wealth in one hand — a man's hand — and from the endeavor to bequeath this wealth to the children of this man to the exclusion of all others. This necessitated monogamy on the woman's, but not on the man's part. Hence this monogamy of women in no way hindered open or secret polygamy of men. Now, the impending social revolution will reduce this whole care of inheritance to a minimum by changing at least the overwhelming part of permanent and inheritable wealth—the means of production—into social property. Since monogamy was caused by economic conditions, will it disappear when these causes are abolished? One might reply, not without reason: not only will it not disappear, but it will rather be perfectly realized. For with the transformation of the means of production into collective property, wagelabor will also disappear, and with it the proletariat and the necessity for a certain, statistically ascertainable number of women to surrender for money. Prostitution disappears and monogamy, instead of going out of existence, at last becomes a reality—for men also. At all events, the situation will be very much changed for men. But also that of women, and of all women, will be considerably altered. With the transformation of the means of production into collective property the monogamous family ceases to be the of society. The private household changes to a social industry. The care and education of children become? a public matter. Society cares equally well for all children, legal or illegal. This removes the care about the \"consequences\" which now forms the essential social factor—moral and economic—hindering a girl to surrender unconditionally to the beloved man. Will not this be sufficient cause for a gradual rise of a more unconventional intercourse of the sexes and a more lenient public opinion regarding virgin honor and female shame? And finally, did we not see that in the modern world monogamy and prostitution, though antitheses, are inseparable and poles of the same social condition? Can prostitution disappear without engulfing at the same time monogamy?",
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      "text": "When you consider socialism, do not fool yourself about its nature. Remember that there is no such dichotomy as “human rights” versus “property rights.” No human rights can exist without property rights.",
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      "text": "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.",
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      "text": "It is a political axiom that power follows property.",
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      "text": "In no other country in the world is the love of property keener or more alert than in the United States, and nowhere else does the majority display less inclination toward doctrines which in any way threaten the way property is owned.",
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      "text": "Any property that's open to common use gets destroyed. Because everyone has incentive to use it to the max, but no one has incentive to maintain it. Like the water and the air. These guys have incentive to pollute the ocean, but no reason to clean it up.",
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      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/neil-gaiman/stardust/when-i-was",
      "text": "When I was very young, somebody — maybe it was a squirrel, they talk so much, or a magpie, or maybe a fishie — told me that Pan owned all this forest. Well, not owned owned. Not like he would sell the forest to someone else, or put a wall all around it ... It's not hard to own something. Or everything. You just have to know that it's yours, and then be willing to let it go.",
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      "text": "For property is robbery, but then, we are all robbers or would-be robbers together, and have found it essential to organise our thieving, as we have found it necessary to organise our lust and our revenge. Property, marriage, the law; as the bed to the river, so rule and convention to the instinct; and woe to him who tampers with the banks while the flood is flowing.",
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      "slug": "so-let-me-say",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/william-faulkner/go-down-moses/so-let-me-say",
      "text": "So let me say it: That nevertheless and notwithstanding old Carothers did own it. Bought it, got it, no matter; kept it, held it, no matter; bequeathed it: else why do you stand here relinquishing and repudiating? Held it, kept it for fifty years until you could repudiate it, while He—this Arbiter, this Architect, this Umpire—condoned—or did He? Looked down and saw—or did He? Or at least did nothing: saw, and could not, or did not see; saw, and would not, or perhaps He would not see—perverse, impotent, or blind: which?",
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      "slug": "you-said-how",
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      "text": "You said how on that instant when Ikkemotubbe realised that he could sell the land to Grandfather, it ceased forever to have been his.",
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        "name": "William Faulkner",
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      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jean-jacques-rousseau/emile-or-on-education/again-monopoly-destroys",
      "text": "Again, monopoly destroys pleasure. Real pleasures are those which we share with the crowd; we lose what we try to keep to ourselves alone. If the walls I build round my park transform it into a gloomy prison, I have only deprived myself, at great expense, of the pleasure of a walk; I must now seek that pleasure at a distance. The demon of property spoils everything he lays hands upon. A rich man wants to be master everywhere, and he is never happy where he is; he is continually driven to flee from himself. I shall therefore continue to do in my prosperity what I did in my poverty. Henceforward, richer in the wealth of others than I ever shall be in my own wealth, I will take possession of everything in my neighbourhood that takes my fancy; no conqueror is so determined as I; I even usurp the rights of princes; I take possession of every open place that pleases me, I give them names; this is my park, chat is my terrace, and I am their owner; henceforward I wander among them at will; I often return to maintain my proprietary rights; I make what use I choose of the ground to walk upon, and you will never convince me that the nominal owner of the property which I have appropriated gets better value out of the money it yields him than I do out of his land. No matter if I am interrupted by hedges and ditches, I take my park on my back, and I carry it elsewhere; there will be space enough for it near at hand, and I may plunder my neighbours long enough before I outstay my welcome. This is an attempt to show what is meant by good taste in the choice of pleasant occupations for our leisure hours; this is the spirit of enjoyment; all else is illusion, fancy, and foolish pride. He who disobeys these rules, however rich he may be, will devour his gold on a dung-hill, and will never know what it is to live. You will say, no doubt, that such amusements lie within the reach of all, that we need not be rich to enjoy them. That is the very point I was coming to. Pleasure is ours when we want it; it is only social prejudice which makes everything hard to obtain, and drives pleasure before us. To be happy is a hundredfold easier than it seems. If he really desires to enjoy himself the man of taste has no need of riches; all he wants is to be free and to be his own master. With health and daily bread we are rich enough, if we will but get rid of our prejudices; this is the \"Golden Mean\" of Horace.",
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      "text": "Man is the cheapest commodity on the market, and among all our important rights of property, the rights of the individual are always considered last of all.",
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      "text": "In every age, and especially in childhood, we want to create, to copy, to produce, to give all the signs of power and activity. He will hardly have seen the gardener at work twice, sowing, planting, and growing vegetables, before he will want to garden himself. According to the principles I have already laid down, I shall not thwart him; on the contrary, I shall approve of his plan, share his hobby, and work with him, not for his pleasure but my own; at least, so he thinks; I shall be his under-gardener, and dig the ground for him till his arms are strong enough to do it; he will take possession of it by planting a bean, and this is surely a more sacred possession, and one more worthy of respect, than that of Nunes Balboa, who took possession of South America in the name of the King of Spain, by planting his banner on the coast of the Southern Sea.",
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