Top 100 Quotes About Property Rights
#1. It's long been common practice among many to draw a distinction between "human rights" and "property rights," suggesting that the two are separate and unequal - with "property rights" second to "human rights."
Richard M. Nixon
#2. The acquisition of a book signalled not just the potential acquisition of knowledge but also something like the property rights to a piece of ground: the knowledge became a visitable place.
James Wood
#3. A modern economy is marked by the feasibility of endogenous change: Modernization brings myriad arrangements from expanded property rights to company law and financial institutions.
Edmund Phelps
#4. Capitalism is not a form of government. Capitalism is a symptom of freedom. It is the result of individual rights, which include property rights.
A.E. Samaan
#5. We were proposing, in a sense, that the rest of the world be made safe for American ideas, as they adopted intellectual property rights that gave patent protection to our very innovative economy.
Jeffrey Sachs
#6. The rule of law is critical for economic development; without clear property rights and contract enforcement, it is difficult for businesses to break out of small circles of trust.
Francis Fukuyama
#7. Together, the property rights and public choice schools show only that, if you start by assuming a purely individualistic model of human behavior and treat politics as if it were a pale imitation of the market, democracy will, indeed, make no sense.
Paul Starr
#8. Millions of people toil in the shadow of the law we make, and much of their livelihood is made possible by the existence of intellectual property rights.
Alex Kozinski
#9. The story of the Western world since 1945 is that, invited to choose between freedom and government 'security,' large numbers of people vote to dump freedom every time - the freedom to make your own decisions about health care, education, property rights, and a ton of other stuff.
Mark Steyn
#10. For us, not cooperating in the monopoly regimes of intellectual property rights and patents and biodiversity - saying "no" to patents on life, and developing intellectual ideas of resistance - is very much a continuation of Gandhian satyagraha. It is, for me, keeping life free in its diversity.
Vandana Shiva
#11. But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights.
Garrett Hardin
#12. The whole notion of land property rights in the Arab world is different from that in Europe.
William Odom
#13. A nation's economy is more than its markets, tastes, technologies and property rights.
Edmund Phelps
#14. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#15. I wasn't political enough to write articles about myself or go to cocktail parties, meaning that not only has my art been pirated and my intellectual property rights stolen, but my work has been misrepresented.
Michael Heizer
#16. Those who cannot afford to sue currently have no protection of their property rights if they come in conflict with a regulation.
Steve Symms
#17. There is no such thing as absolute free speech; there are only absolute rights of private property. Speech is circumscribed by private property rights. You may deliver a disquisition in my virtual or actual living room only if I permit you to so do.
Ilana Mercer
#18. 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.
David Korten
#19. Ultimately property rights and personal rights are the same thing.
Calvin Coolidge
#20. Whenever the dollar is held supreme and capitalistic interests dominate, a higher value will always be placed upon property rights than upon human rights.
Dick Gregory
#21. Fuck's sake." Vaughan hefted me up, holding me closer. "No one in this town respect property rights anymore?"
"You should really lock your doors," I mumbled, giving up the struggle. "Windows too." He grunted, unamused.
Kylie Scott
#22. For the West, the enemy was not "socialism" but capitalism. How to tame and subdue the polar bear, how to take over the talent, the science, the technology, how to buy out the human capital, how to acquire the intellectual property rights?
Michel Chossudovsky
#23. I often say that if you want to really want to understand the contract of marriage, just ask anyone who has been divorced. The marriage contract is one of property rights. Or maybe you can look in the Bible to see what Adam had to say about divorce, since Eve was his second wife.
Harvey Fierstein
#24. If you really want to help the rest of the world, what you've got to do is encourage free markets, private property rights and the strong rule of law and get rid of the dictators in a lot of these countries.
Dave Brat
#25. Trade unions infringe upon the property rights of company owners.
Barry Goldwater
#26. 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.
Ayn Rand
#27. The best way to help the poor is the provide them property rights.
Liu Junning
#28. The dichotomy between personal liberties and property rights is a false one. Property does not have rights. People have rights.
Potter Stewart
#29. We need to keep a very keen eye on our own government. It's getting too rich and redistributing wealth is a sure way of robbing us of our private property rights and other rights along with them.
Richard Pipes
#30. I am a strong believer that intellectual property rights need to be protected.
Jim Oberweis
#31. No freedom is secure if your property rights are not secure.
Neal Boortz
#32. Because rights are only claims against other people, and not claims on other people and their property, rights end when they infringe on the rights of others.
Daniel Alexander Brackins
#33. I believe China is a major trade violator. The Chinese break all the rules. They counterfeit our goods, steal our international property rights, and hack the computers of our industries and government. Something must be done about it.
Lawrence Kudlow
#34. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.
Ayn Rand
#35. If China wants to be a constructive, active player in the world economy, it's got to respect intellectual property rights or it makes it pretty impossible to do business with them.
Dan Glickman
#36. Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned
Ayn Rand
#37. [ ... ] most of the environmental hype [regarding global warming] is really to help bring about Karl Marx's dream (nightmare) of a Communist world. [by reduction, and ultimately elimination of private property rights
Kent Hovind
#38. The question of perpetual copyright is, in my judgement, entitled to the full and favorable consideration of the Congress of an enlightened republic. There would seem to be every reason for the equitable protection, without limit as to time, of the unquestioned property rights of its citizens.
Florence Earle Coates
#39. The electronic spectrum is the only natural resource in which there's no such thing as private property rights. You can't own a piece of the spectrum.
Adrian Cronauer
#40. Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.
Thomas Sowell
#41. When all the bullshit about rational, divinely inspired social order is put to one side, Roman law was all about defining and protecting property rights ...
Peter Heather
#42. Inclusive economic institutions require secure property rights and economic opportunities not just for the elite but for a broad cross-section of society.
Daron Acemoglu
#43. There is a real function for government in respect to pollution: to set conditions and, in particular, define property rights to make sure that the costs are borne by the parties responsible.
Milton Friedman
#44. The flaw is when the "might makes right" rule vests property rights in whichever local actors can be the most ruthless or terrifying. That first step is the flaw that any market system worthy of the name must correct.
Christopher Heath Wellman
#45. The essential characteristic of socialism is the denial of individual property rights ...
Ayn Rand
#46. If we buy into the notion that somehow property rights are less important, or are in conflict with, human or civil rights, we give the socialists a freer hand to attack our property.
Walter E. Williams
#47. The supremacy of Parliament and the embedding of property rights in Common Law put political power in the hands of men anxious to exploit the new economic opportunities and provided the framework for a judicial system to protect and encourage productive economic activity
Douglass North
#48. For over 30 years the Endangered Species Act has suffered from many fundamental flaws, the most notable being a blatant disregard for property rights,.
Chris Cannon
#49. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the 'hidden' confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights.
Alan Greenspan
#50. Can a non-Western power really hope to benefit from downloading Western scientific knowledge, if it continues to reject that other key part of the West's winning formula: the third institutional innovation of private property rights, the rule of law and truly representative government?
Niall Ferguson
#51. It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom of contract," he noted, "to require that when men receive from government the privilege of doing business under corporate form," they assume an obligation to the public.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#52. agreements were documents of inequality codified under American law, which had always favored property rights over liberties of the individual. This made any landlord the most important person in his or her tenants' lives, capable of enacting terrible vengeance on the slightest whim.
Jarett Kobek
#53. Our economic freedom is founded on individual property rights; government should never be permitted to take those away.
Ernest Istook
#54. The true test of one's commitment to liberty and private property rights doesn't come when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we agree. The true test comes when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we disagree.
Walter E. Williams
#55. If you're running a dictatorship, you don't really have to worry about the welfare or the property rights of the ordinary citizen. Only the people who keep you in power, a very small group, matter.
Bruce Bueno De Mesquita
#56. You cannot have an agency that defends your property, which also has the right to violate your property rights at will. That's like hiring a bodyguard that you pay to beat you up randomly.
Stefan Molyneux
#57. Establish democracy at home, based on human rights as superior to property rights ...
Jeannette Rankin
#58. Polygamy was common [amongst the Navajo], but women had superior property rights, owning sheep and the houses. A man who deserted his family would be destitute -- a powerful incentive to stay married.
Timothy Egan
#59. Maybe I'm overly pessimistic, but most of Africa is a continent without much hope for its people ... What [Africa] needs, the West cannot give. ... what Africans need is personal liberty ... [and] guarantees of private property rights and rule of law.
Walter E. Williams
#60. It is worth noting that honoring private property rights protects not just the rich; it especially protects the poor.
Helen Raleigh
#61. Folks are obviously reluctant to do things that they don't feel comfortable with, and the conservative nature of the state is such that they can understand property rights.
Jesse Lee Peterson
#62. There is no such dichotomy as 'human rights' versus 'property rights.' No human rights can exist without property rights.
Ayn Rand
#63. We're taking on Social Security as a property rights issue. We figure that every single American has an absolute property right interest in the fruits of his or her own labor. What I work for should be my property.
Malcolm Wallop
#64. The pillars of classical liberalism call for flat taxes, with revenues put to limited uses; strong property rights; and free markets.
Richard A. Epstein
#66. The Industry's at war. I think it's about control. You can make all of the financial arguments that the industry has been shooting itself in the foot, but it is an industry built on a foundation of ownership and exploitation of intellectual property rights.
Don Rose
#67. A genuine free enterprise system, without state-enforced artificial scarcities, artificial property rights or subsidies, would be like dynamite at the foundations of corporate power.
Kevin Carson
#68. The function of Government must be to favor no small group at the expense of its duty to protect the rights of personal freedom and of private property of all its citizens.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#69. Gratitude is a sign of maturity ... Where there is appreciation: there is also courtesy and concern for the rights and property of others.
Gordon B. Hinckley
#70. Our goals can only be achieved with a society that respects and equally protects the rights of every human being, old and young, rich and poor, regardless of gender, color, race, or creed. We must reject the initiation of violence by individuals or government as morally repugnant.
Ron Paul
#71. Everyone should feel comfortable they are going to remain in their homes until their dying days. We should never be uneasy or unsure of where our home is in the United States of America.
Tit Elingtin
#72. If we would have civilization and the exertion indispensable to its success, we must have property; if we have property, we must have its rights; if we have the rights of property, we must take those consequences of the rights of property which are inseparable from the rights themselves.
James F. Cooper
#73. Nothing appeals to children more than justice, and they should be taught in the nursery to "play fair" in games, to respect each other's property and rights, to give credit to others, and not to take too much credit to themselves.
Emily Post
#74. It should go without saying that even the most narrowly construed eminent-domain power would violate individual rights. Either a person owns his legitimately acquired property or he does not.
Sheldon Richman
#75. 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
#76. Measures should be enacted which, without violating the rights of property, would reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort.
James Madison
#77. The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression.
Thomas Paine
#78. Interestingly, Marxism, Communism and its derivative, Socialism, when seen years later in practice, are nothing but state-capitalism and rule by a privileged minority, exercising despotic and total control over a majority which is left with virtually no property or legal rights.
Andrew Carrington Hitchcock
#79. All sentient beings should have at least one right - the right not to be treated as property
Gary L. Francione
#81. It is self-evident that no number of men, by conspiring, and calling themselves a government, can acquire any rights whatever over other men, or other men's property, which they had not before, as individuals.
Lysander Spooner
#82. The property a man has in his own industry, is violated, whenever he is forbidden the free exercise of his faculties or talents, except insomuch as they would interfere with the rights of third parties.
Jean-Baptiste Say
#83. Women ought to be fully guarded by law in all rights of property, labor, profession, etc.; but, roughly stated, the voting population ought to represent the fighting population.
John Boyle O'Reilly
#84. Of the unjust rights which in virtue of this ceremony an iniquitous law gives me over the person and property of another, I cannot legally, but I can morally, divest myself.
Robert Dale Owen
#85. In America there are none poor, and none even that can be called peasants. Each citizen has some property, and all citizens have the same rights as the richest individual, or landed proprietor, in the country.
Marquis De Lafayette
#86. I'm a libertarian-conservative. I believe the state should focus on defending lives, rights, and property instead of depriving its citizens of their God-given liberties.
Todd Young
#87. All men have equal rights to liberty, to their property, and to the protection of the laws
Voltaire
#88. The definition of winning has become distorted. If winning the rights to a property brings with it hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, what have you won? When faced with the prospect of heavy financial losses, we have consistently walked away and have done so again.
Dick Ebersol
#89. Experiments in digitizing and running neural wetware under emulation are well established; some radical libertarians claim that, as the technology matures, death with its draconian curtailment of property and voting rights will become the biggest civil rights issue of all.
Charles Stross
#90. As long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of persons and of property, liberty of conscience and of the press, it will be worth defending.
Andrew Jackson
#91. It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot well be separated.
James Madison
#92. We assert that in those areas where the government is either unable or unwilling to protect the lives and property of our people, that our peopie are within our rights to protect themselves by whatever means necessary.
Malcolm X
#93. Ressentiment must therefore be strongest in a society like ours, where approximately equal rights (political and otherwise) or formal social equality, publicly recognized, go hand in hand with wide factual differences in power, property, and education.
Max Scheler
#94. While American intellectual property deserves protection, that protection must be won and defended in a manner that does not stifle innovation, erode due process under the law, and weaken the protection of political and civil rights on the Internet.
Rebecca MacKinnon
#95. A basic component of individual rights is the right to own property.
Russell Shorto
#96. You see, it is my passionately held belief that the right to possess property is at best a contingent one. When disparities become too great, a superior right, that to life, outweighs the right to property. Ergo, the very poor have the right to steal from the very rich.
Mohsin Hamid
#97. The crowning feature of the federal system is the supremacy of the judiciary over all other branches of government in matters relating to the rights of persons and property.
Charles A. Beard
#98. 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
#99. Rights give rise to legal claims. Ultimately, the more rights animals are granted, the greater the legal lien exercised on their behalf against the liberty and property of people.
Ilana Mercer
#100. When we love children, we acknowledge by our every action that they are not property, that they have rights - that we respect and uphold their rights.
Bell Hooks
