Private Property Quotes

• 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

  Wisdom, Knowledge, Mean

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• Property must be secured, or liberty cannot exist.

  John Adams

  Liberty, Patriot, Property

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.280

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

  John Locke

  Men, Reason Why, Preservation

  John Locke (1821). “Two treatises of government”, p.377

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• 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

  Ideas, Law, Justice

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1851). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.9

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• The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Important, Liberty, Libertarian

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• Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark.

  Walter Lippmann

  Freedom, Liberty, Libertarian

  Walter Lippmann (1934). “The method of freedom”

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• The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.

  Karl Marx

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Political

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• Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property.

  Ayn Rand

  Work, Mean, Reality

  Ayn Rand (2011). “Ayn Rand Novel Collection”, p.2260, Penguin

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• The widespread distribution of private property ownership is the cornerstone of American liberty. Without it, neither our free enterprise system nor our republican form of government could long endure.

  Jeffrey H Reiman

  Wisdom, Government, Long

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• Private property creates for the individual a sphere in which he is free of the state. It sets limits to the operation of the authoritarian will.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Limits, Spheres, Individual

  Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Liberalism: The Classical Tradition: The Economist”, p.53, VM eBooks

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• Private ownership of property is vital to both our freedom and our prosperity.

  Cathy McMorris Rodgers

  Prosperity, Ownership, Property

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• It is clear that the main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected, since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit, is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and would introduce confusion and disorder into the commonweal. The first and most fundamental principle, therefore, if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property.

  Pope Leo XIII

  Wisdom, Rights, Confusion

  Pope Leo XIII (1990). “A Light in the Heavens: Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII”, p.148, TAN Books

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  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

  Rights, Liberty, Together

  Samuel Adams (1946). “Samuel Adams: selections from his writings”

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• What our generation has forgotten is that the system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not. It is only because the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting independently that nobody has complete power over us, that we as individuals can decide what to do with ourselves.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Mean, Our Generation, People

  "The Road to Serfdom". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Ch. 7 : Economic Control and Totalitarianism, 1940 - 1943.

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• 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

  Law, Community, Violation

  William Blackstone (2016). “The Oxford Edition of Blackstone's: Commentaries on the Laws of England: Book I: Of the Rights of Persons”, p.206, Oxford University Press

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• We stand for the maintenance of private property... We shall protect free enterprise as the most expedient, or rather the sole possible economic order.

  Adolf Hitler

  Order, Tyrants, Maintenance

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• 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

  Men, Law, Liberty

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.6, Cosimo, Inc.

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• By abolishing private property one deprives the human love of aggression.

  Sigmund Freud

  Love, Aggression, Humans

  "The Major Works of Sigmund Freud".

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

  John Locke

  Self Esteem, Philosophical, Men

  John Locke, John W. Yolton (1977). “The Locke Reader: Selections from the Works of John Locke with a General Introduction and Commentary”, p.289, CUP Archive

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• 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.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Life, Respect, Men

  Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King (Jr.) (1989). “The trumpet of conscience”, HarperCollins

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• No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

  Mark Twain

  Life, Trust, Freedom

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

  Ludwig von Mises

  Civilization, Would Be, Economy

  Ludwig Von Mises (1985). “Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War”, Libertarian Press

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• To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association-the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Wisdom, Father, Exercise

  Thomas Jefferson (1900). “The Life and Writings of ...”

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• As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.

  Adam Smith

  Country, Men, Economic Inequality

  Adam Smith (1814). “An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. With notes, and an additional vol., by D. Buchanan”, p.80

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• Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Funny, Respect, Humor

  The Man WhoWas Thursday ch. 4 (1908)

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