Quotes on Property Rights

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

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.

In a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of institutions that give precedence to the property rights of 'the Haves' over the human rights of 'the Have Nots' is inevitably called into serious question.

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

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.

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.

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.

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.

When more of the people's sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government and expenses of its economical administration, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of free government.

Landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed.

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

I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force...Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

That no government, so called, can reasonably be trusted, or reasonably be supposed to have honest purposes in view, any longer than it depends wholly upon voluntary support.

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.

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

The right to life is the source of all rights -- and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

Freedom and Property Rights are inseparable. You can't have one without the other.

Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution . .