91 Quotes About Property

We all want to be homeowners, but the thought of owning a home is often quite scary. We spend years saving up for a down payment, and then we wonder why we’re struggling to make our mortgage payments. And those monthly bills really add up! So whether you’re considering a new home or considering moving out of your current one, these funny and inspiring quotes about property will help motivate you to take that next step.

1
Love is made up of three unconditional properties in equal measure:1. Acceptance2. Understanding3. AppreciationRemove any one of the three and the triangle falls apart. Which, by the way, is something highly inadvisable. Think about it – do you really want to live in a world of only two dimensions? So, for the love of a triangle, please keep love whole. Vera Nazarian
2
How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property — either as a child, a wife, or a concubine — must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome. Winston S. Churchill
3
A human being needs only a small plot of ground on which to be happy, and even less to lie beneath. Unknown
Knowledge is a unique kind of property, indeed: you can...
4
Knowledge is a unique kind of property, indeed: you can share it with others, while still possessing it. Eraldo Banovac
6
And when the earth began to rumble and quake, as fear and frantic set in, he ran back inside the house past his wife and children, gathering all the valuables and things he thought of importance, and ran back to his car packing away. After making two trips in and out, he waited in the car for his family to come out, in fear they darted through the darkness and pelting cold rain. When everything calmed down, and the house was intact and safe, he returned putting everything back in its place, had the kids go to bed, told his wife he loves her and turned off the light. Anthony Liccione
The most valuable real estate in the universe is inside...
7
The most valuable real estate in the universe is inside your soul. Matshona Dhliwayo
8
In the first place, Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of houses above a certain rent are women. If a married couple come to settle in the town, somehow the gentleman disappears; he is either fairly frightened to death by being the only man in the Cranford parties, or he is accounted for by being with his regiment, his hip, or closely engaged in business all the week in the great neighbouring commercial town of Drumble, distant only twenty miles on a railroad. In short, whatever does become of the gentlemen, they are not at Cranford. Elizabeth Gaskell
Nonviolence simply cannot defend property rights over human rights.
9
Nonviolence simply cannot defend property rights over human rights. David T. Dellinger
10
If one prevents a man from working for the good of society while at the same time providing for the satisfaction of his own needs, then only one way remains open to him: to make himself richer and others poorer by the violent oppression and spoliation of his fellow men. Ludwig Von Mises
Against what is stupid, nonsensical, erroneous, and evil, [classical] liberalism...
11
Against what is stupid, nonsensical, erroneous, and evil, [classical] liberalism fights with the weapons of the mind, and not with brute force and repression. Ludwig Von Mises
In a battle between force and an idea, the latter...
12
In a battle between force and an idea, the latter always prevails. Ludwig Von Mises
Do all you have agreed to do, and do not...
13
Do all you have agreed to do, and do not encroach on other persons or their property. Richard J. Maybury
Whether it is big or small, the size of a...
14
Whether it is big or small, the size of a poor man’s yard incessantly reminds him that he is poor. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
15
Some people will each start investing more of their salary on ‘their’ house and spending less of it on ‘their’ car or cars only when they start being able to take ‘their’ house to work, funerals, weddings, etc. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
16
When I was a child, my mother would try to convince me of a woman's need for a secret stash. "It can be anything: land, property, even a couple hundred dollars. You know, in case anything goes wrong and you have to get the hell out of there." Her mother had told her this, as her mother before had told her. Zinzi Clemmons
17
At one time in the world there were woods that no one owned Cormac McCarthy
18
He sank back into his black-and-white world, his immobile world of inanimate drawings that had been granted the secret of motion, his death-world with its hidden gift of life. But that life was a deeply ambiguous life, a conjurer's trick, a crafty illusion based on an accidental property of the retina, which retained an image for a fraction of a second after the image was no longer present. On this frail fact was erected the entire structure of the cinema, that colossal confidence game. The animated cartoon was a far more honest expression of the cinematic illusion than the so-called realistic film, because the cartoon reveled in its own illusory nature, exulted in the impossible--indeed it claimed the impossible as its own, exalted it as its own highest end, found in impossibility, in the negation of the actual, its profoundest reason for being. The animated cartoon was nothing but the poetry of the impossible--therein lay its exhilaration and its secret melancholy. For this willful violation of the actual, while it was an intoxicating release from the constriction of things, was at the same time nothing but a delusion, an attempt to outwit mortality. As such it was doomed to failure. And yet it was desperately important to smash through the constriction of the actual, to unhinge the universe and let the impossible stream in, because otherwise--well, otherwise the world was nothing but an editorial cartoon. Steven Millhauser
19
All sentient beings should have at least one right–the right not to be treated as property Gary L. Francione
20
Repression by brute force is always a confession of the inability to make use of the better weapons of the intellect–better because they alone give promise of final success. Ludwig Von Mises
21
Women are also property in our bible; adultery is a property crime in the Old Testament, not a sex crime. Bill Maher
22
You will not be master of my body & my property Geoffrey Chaucer
23
What was marriage but sex plus property. Hanif Kureishi
24
I've been so bothered with my property, that I'm tired of it, and don't mean to save up any more, but give it away as I go along, and then nobody will envy me, or want to steal it, and I shan't be suspecting folks and worrying about my old cash. Louisa May Alcott
25
The emotional trauma of a security breach can sometimes stay with a person for the rest of their lives. This is why the best prevention efforts are important for your family. Franklin Gillette
26
In the final scene of Power, the Supreme Court justices appear as a striking abstraction: Nine scowling masks line up in a row on top of a giant podium. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes speaks the majority opinion: 'Water power, the right to convert it into electric energy, and the electric energy thus produced constitute property belonging to the United States. Susan Quinn
27
There is an undeniable web connecting incidents such as the rise to power of dictators... poverty and the perception of human beings as disposable property. Beatrice Rose Roberts
28
You know, there’s no pleasure like the joy of being a sexual woman. You can take your careers, your money, your houses and possessions, and you go and throw them in a Fiona Thrust
29
You know, there’s no pleasure like the joy of being a sexual woman. You can take your careers, your money, your houses and possessions, and you go and throw them in a lake. Because life is really all about sex. That’s what I keep learning, again and again. It’s the most important thing, woven into the very centre of life. And I just know I was put on this earth to be a sexual woman, and to explore as much about sex as I can. Fiona Thrust
30
We own the things that claim that we are theirs. Unknown
31
Taxes are what we pay for civilized society, for modernity, and for prosperity. The wealthy pay more because they have benefitted more. Taxes, well laid and well spent, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare. Taxes protect property and the environment; taxes make business possible. Taxes pay for roads and schools and bridges and police and teachers. Taxes pay for doctors and nursing homes and medicine. During an emergency, like an earthquake or a hurricane, taxes pay for rescue workers, shelters, and services. For people whose lives are devastated by other kinds of disaster, like the disaster of poverty, taxes pay, even, for food. Jill Lepore
32
It is a policeman’s duty to retrieve stolen property and return it to its owners. But when robbery becomes the purpose of the law, and the policeman’s duty becomes, not protection, but the plunder of property - then it is an outlaw who has to become a policeman. Ayn Rand
33
A pickpocket is obviously a champion of private enterprise. But it would perhaps be an exaggeration to say that a pickpocket is a champion of private property. The point about Capitalism and Commercialism, as conducted of late, is that they have really preached the extension of business rather than the preservation of belongings; and have at best tried to disguise the pickpocket with some of the virtues of the pirate. G.k. Chesterton
34
People are not like a business. You can’t buy and sell them like so much property. You can’t lock them up in a vault and expect them to appreciate it. Harold Robbins
35
With deregulation, privatisation, free trade, what we're seeing is yet another enclosure and, if you like, private taking of the commons. One of the things I find very interesting in our current debates is this concept of who creates wealth. That wealth is only created when it's owned privately. What would you call clean water, fresh air, a safe environment? Are they not a form of wealth? And why does it only become wealth when some entity puts a fence around it and declares it private property? Well, you know, that's not wealth creation. That's wealth usurpation. Elaine Bernard
36
Nonviolence is supremely the weapon of the dispossessed, the underprivileged, and the egalitarian, not those who are still addicted to private profit, commercial values, and great wealth. David T. Dellinger
37
The key to understanding if something is truly precious is to ask if we can hold it, for things truly precious cannot be held. Craig D. Lounsbrough
38
Real estate investing, even on a very small scale, remains a tried and true means of building an individual's cash flow and wealth. Robert T. Kiyosaki
39
Many a rich man’s bed is bigger than many a poor woman’s bedroom; his bedroom, her house. Mokokoma Mokhonoana
40
It was not, then, race and culture calling out of the South in 1876; it was property and privilege, shrieking to its own kind, and privilege and property heard and recognized the voice of its own. W.E.B. Du Bois
41
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
42
Property is not the natural and obvious and inevitable concept that most people think it is. Robert A. Heinlein
43
If the Pentateuch is not inspired in its astronomy, geology, geography, history or philosophy, if it is not inspired concerning slavery, polygamy, war, law, religious or political liberty, or the rights of men, women and children, what is it inspired in, or about? The unity of God?–that was believed long before Moses was born. Special providence?–that has been the doctrine of ignorance in all ages. The rights of property?–theft was always a crime. The sacrifice of animals?–that was a custom thousands of years before a Jew existed. The sacredness of life?–there have always been laws against murder. The wickedness of perjury?–truthfulness has always been a virtue. The beauty of chastity?–the Pentateuch does not teach it. Thou shalt worship no other God?–that has been the burden of all religions. Robert G. Ingersoll
44
In fact, if law were restricted to protecting all persons, all liberties, and all properties; if law were nothing more than the organized combination of the individual's right to self-defense; if law were the obstacle, the check, the punisher of all oppression and plunder – is it likely that we citizens would then argue much about the extent of the franchise? Unknown
45
Torturing innocents, murdering civilians and destroying public property; they are all the gifts we have been given by religion. M.F. Moonzajer
46
Nobody is sure of his life, property and health when the parliament deliberates. Janusz KorwinMikke
47
Do you know how they brainwash people? They repeat something over and over. And that's what we do in this country. Owning things is good. More money is good. More property is good. More commercialism is good. More is good. More is good. We repeat it-- and have it repeated to us-- over and over until nobody bothers to even think otherwise. The average person is so fogged up by all this, he has no perspective on what's really important anymore. . Mitch Albom
48
You know that when a group of utility workers are withholding their customer service identification cards, they are likely engaging in some form of illegal activity at your home. Steven Magee
49
Americans think New Yorkers are property obsessed, but clearly they haven’t lived a day in Hong Kong. In this part of the world, a man isn’t a man until he is a homeowner. His entire life leads up to the singular moment when he hands over the down-payment check and puts his signature on the triplicate purchase agreement. All the good grades and job promotions he has received are mere preparation; and every source of happiness - marriage, children and retirement - depends on it. . Jason Y. Ng
50
My grandfather used to say ‘It is my house I am paying the bills’, my dad used to say ‘this is my house I pay the mortgage’, my generation is saying this is my house I pay the rent. Csaba GaborB.
51
No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session. Unknown
52
Libertarianism holds that the only proper role of violence is to defend person and property against violence, that any use of violence that goes beyond such just defense is itself aggressive, unjust, and criminal Murray N. Rothbard
53
Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long that they have come to esteem the religious, learned and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is. Ralph Waldo Emerson
54
If you believe in democracy, make arrangements to distribute property as widely as possible. Aldous Huxley
55
Go to hell."" I've already been there. I own property in it. Tessa Bailey
56
The purchaser draws boundaries, fences himself in, and says, “This is mine; each one by himself, each one for himself.” Here, then, is a piece of land upon which, henceforth, no one has a right to step, save the proprietor and his friends; which can benefit nobody, save the proprietor and his servants. Let these sales multiply, and soon the people – who have been neither able nor willing to sell, and who have received none of the proceeds of the sale – will have nowhere to rest, no place of shelter, no ground to till. They will die of hunger at the proprietor’s door, on the edge of that property which was their birthright; and the proprietor, watching them die, will exclaim, “So perish idlers and vagrants! . PierreJoseph Proudhon
57
What is this you call property? It cannot be the earth. For the land is our mother, nourishing all her children, beasts, birds, fish, and all men. The woods, the streams, everything on it belongs to everybody and is for the use of all. How can one man say it belongs to him only? Massasoit
58
This dog is mine, " said those poor children; "that is my place in the sun." Here is the beginning and the image of the usurpation of all the earth. Blaise Pascal
59
For the same reason a disease cannot be cured by more of the germ that caused it, the inflation and debt accumulation of the Obama years will not inflate our way out of it. Ron Paul
60
Just as sex is a God-given instinct for the prolongation of the human race, so the desire for property as a prolongation of one's ego is a natural right sanctioned by natural law. A person is free on the inside because he can call his soul his own; he is free on the outside because he can call property his own. Internal freedom is based upon the fact that "I am"; external freedom is based on the fact that "I have." But just as the excesses of flesh produce lust, for lust is sex in the wrong place, so there can be a deordination of the desire for property until it becomes greed, avarice, and capitalistic aggression. Fulton J. Sheen
61
Take one famous example: arguments about property destruction after Seattle. Most of these, I think, were really arguments about capitalism. Those who decried window-breaking did so mainly because they wished to appeal to middle-class consumers to move towards global exchange-style green consumerism, and to ally with labor bureaucracies and social democrats abroad. This was not a path designed to provoke a direct confrontation with capitalism, and most of those who urged us to take this route were at least skeptical about the possibility that capitalism could ever really be defeated. Many were in fact in favor of capitalism, if in a significantly humanized form. Those who did break windows, on the other hand, didn't care if they offended suburban homeowners, because they did not figure that suburban homeowners were likely to ever become a significant element in any future revolutionary anticapitalist coalition. They were trying, in effect, to hijack the media to send a message that the system was vulnerable -- hoping to inspire similar insurrectionary acts on the part of those who might be considering entering a genuinely revolutionary alliance; alienated teenagers, oppressed people of color, undocumented workers, rank-and-file laborers impatient with union bureaucrats, the homeless, the unemployed, the criminalized, the radically discontent. If a militant anticapitalist movement was to begin, in America, it would have to start with people like these: people who don't need to be convinced that the system is rotten, only, that there's something they can do about it. And at any rate, even if it were possible to have an anticapitalist revolution without gun-battles in the streets -- which most of us are hoping it is, since let's face it, if we come up against the US army, we will lose -- there's no possible way we could have an anticapitalist revolution while at the same time scrupulously respecting property rights. Yes, that will probably mean the suburban middle class will be the last to come on board. But they would probably be the last to come on board anyway. David Graeber
62
Central to Möser's view of the human world was "honor, " a notion that was as important to corporatist society as the notion of dignity would be for the more individualistic society that succeeded it. In Möser's view, a person acquired his identity from his place in the institutional structure of society, a society in which economic, social, and political institutions were not distinguished from one another. His status (as a guildsman, noble landowner, serf, or independent peasant cottager) determined not only how he earned his living, but his sense of who he was, of what his duties and obligations were, of those to whom he ought to defer and those who ought to defer to him. (In the language of modern sociology, Möser's society was one in which almost all of the individual's roles derived from a single status.) Who one was was largely a continuation of what one's forebears had been. For Möser the real self was the socially encumbered self, the self based on status, on historical and regional particularity, and on property. It was a self whose prime virtue was honor. Status and the honor that attached to it were inherited, although they could be lost if one failed to live up to the duties of one's rank. . Jerry Z. Muller
63
...A vision from a universe where the Equal Rights Amendment--with its redefinition of personhood--is rejected by the house of deputies: A universe where to die is to become property and to be created outwith a gift of parental DNA is to be doomed to slavery. Charles Stross
64
The “pursuit of happiness” is such a key element of the “American (ideological) dream” that one tends to forget the contingent origin of this phrase: “We holds these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Where did the somewhat awkward “pursuit of happiness” come from in this famous opening passage of the US Declaration of Independence? The origin of it is John Locke, who claimed that all men had the natural rights of life, liberty, and property– the latter was replaced by “the pursuit of happiness” during negotiations of the drafting of the Declaration, as a way to negate the black slaves’ right to property. Unknown
65
You are not property. If you choose to leave, no one will stop you. Elizabeth Vaughan
66
Water belongs to us all. Nature did not make the sun one person's property, nor air, nor water, cool and clear. Michael Simpson
67
In my mind, I could sense their roots under the soil, creeping in helical tangles of ever-increasing complexity outward and in all directions–out beyond the perimeter of the Helsingør Wood, out below Yami’s Under City, out along the banks of the river, out to the nearest coast and thereupon out into the sea; the roots crept down further along the continental shelf, downward into the abysses, downward into the ocean floor, burrowing under the corals and under trenches, and then back up again to sprout in the darkened forest on a foreign continent: all the trees of the world now had conjoined roots, for they were now of one conjoined consciousness! . Ashim Shanker
68
For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. Oscar Wilde
69
It’s herding kittens. If kittens had a lot of guns and an overdose of neo- Libertarian property theory. James S.A. Corey
70
That which is worth telling is not worth having. Raheel Farooq
71
To make a claim of ownership implies a claim against others. That is, others must refrain from interfering with your use of that thing. As such the very act of the body occupying its standing room is to make a claim against others because only one body can occupy the space at a time. Daniel Alexander Brackins
72
Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana. Bill Gates
73
Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. Gilbert K. Chesterton
74
It wouldn't be fair to say that conservatives cherish property the way liberals cherish equality. But it would be fair to say that the takings clause is the conservatives' recipe for judicial activism just as they say liberals have misused the equal protection clause. Michael Kinsley
75
If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization. Ludwig Von Mises
76
No power on earth has a right to take our property from us without our consent. John Jay
77
Avoid lawsuits beyond all things; they pervert your conscience, impair your health, and dissipate your property. Unknown
78
I don't think marriage is a civil right, but I think that being able to transfer property is a civil right. Barack Obama
79
When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property. Thomas Jefferson
80
It is remarkable that jealousy of individual property in land often goes along with very exaggerated doctrines of tribal or national property in land. William Graham Sumner
81
Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers. Aristotle
82
Government has no other end, but the preservation of property. John Locke
83
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
84
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
85
Secure property in hand leads to peace in mind. Mencius
86
The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all. Voltaire
87
The State provides a legal, orderly, systematic channel for the predation of private property; it renders certain, secure, and relatively 'peaceful' the lifeline of the parasitic caste in society. Murray Rothbard
88
Socialism, reduced to its simplest legal and practical expression, means the complete discarding of the institution of private property by transforming it into public property, and the division of the resultant public income equally and indiscriminately among the entire population. George Bernard Shaw
89
Private ownership of property is vital to both our freedom and our prosperity. Cathy McMorris Rodgers
90
A culture without property, or in which creators can't get paid, is anarchy, not freedom. Lawrence Lessig