Quotes on Property Rights

The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.

In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them. He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them. He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them. In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.

Establish democracy at home, based on human rights as superior to property rights. . . .

As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.

Take not from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.

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

The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave.

If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worse fate, you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

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.

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.