Source: https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Possessions
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 01:58:27+00:00

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Property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person or jointly by a group of people. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property has the right to consume, sell, rent, mortgage, transfer, exchange or destroy their property, or to exclude others from doing these things.
Birth and wealth are conferred on some men as imperiously by nature, as genius, strength, or beauty.
John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, November 15, 1813, in The Portable John Adams (2004), p. 504.
Property is surely a right of mankind as really as liberty. Perhaps, at first, prejudice, habit, shame or fear, principle or religion, would restrain the poor from attacking the rich, and the idle from usurping on the industrious; but the time would not be long before courage and enterprise would come, and pretexts be invented by degrees, to countenance the majority in dividing all the property among them, or at least, in sharing it equally with its present possessors. Debts would be abolished first; taxes laid heavy on the rich, and not at all on the others; and at last a downright equal division of every thing be demanded, and voted. What would be the consequence of this? The idle, the vicious, the intemperate, would rush into the utmost extravagance of debauchery, sell and spend all their share, and then demand a new division of those who purchased from them. 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. If "Thou shall not covet," and "Thou shall not steal," are not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.
John Adams, Ch. 1 Marchamont Nedham: The Right Constitution of a Commonwealth Examined, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787).
A man might say, "The things that are in the world are what God has made. ... Why should I not love what God has made?" ... Suppose, my brethren, a man should make for his betrothed a ring, and she should prefer the ring given her to the betrothed who made it for her, would not her heart be convicted of infidelity? ... God has given you all these things: therefore, love him who made them.
Behold how only a few things suffice for you; nor does God ask much of you. Seek as much as He has given you, and from that take as much as is necessary; the superfluous things which remain are the necessaries of others. The superfluities of the rich are the necessaries of the poor. They who possess superfluities possess the goods of others.
Basil of Caesarea, Homily 6, “I Shall Tear Down My Barns,” C. P. Schroeder, trans., in Saint Basil on Social Justice (2009), p. 69.
Basil of Caesarea, Homily 6, “I Shall Tear Down My Barns,” C. P. Schroeder, trans., in Saint Basil on Social Justice (2009), p. 70.
Humanity ... is never stationary. Its progressive march leads it to equality. Its regressive march goes back through every stage of privilege to human slavery, the final word of the right to property.
Here is an untaught ordinary person, who has no regard for the noble ones and is unskilled and undisciplined. ... He conceives himself as earth, he conceives himself in earth, he conceives himself apart from earth, he conceives earth to be ‘mine,’ he delights in earth. Why is that? Because he has not fully understood it, I say. ... He conceives himself in beings, he conceives himself apart from beings, he conceives beings to be ‘mine,’ he delights in beings. Why is that? Because he has not fully understood it, I say. ... He conceives himself in gods, he conceives himself apart from gods, he conceives gods to be ‘mine,’ he delights in gods. Why is that? Because he has not fully understood it, I say.
You are no sister of ours; what shadow of proof is there? Here are our parchments, our padlocks, proving indisputably our money-safes to be ours, and you to have no business with them. Depart!
All possessions are by nature unrighteous when a man possesses them for personal advantage as being entirely his own, and does not bring them into the common stock for those in need.
Clement of Alexandria, The Rich Man's Salvation, as translated by G. W. Butterworth, in Clement of Alexandria (Harvard University Press: 1979), p. 337.
We are passing from an age when the emphasis in all our legislation has been upon property over into an age when the emphasis is going to be more and more upon life. Not that we shall fail to recognize the sacred rights of property. I am one of the first to acknowledge the sacred rights of property. Why? Not because of its material intrinsic value,—no, not that,—but because property represents crystalized human life. That is the reason it is sacred. But when it comes into competition, in warfare with human life itself the decision of the future is going to be more often in the interest of life and less often in the interest of property. Do you realize that ninety-five per cent of all our statutes on our books here in this State, and throughout the country, deal with the protection of property, and only about five per cent of them deal with the protection of life? That was inevitable, for it is a part of our evolutionary, or growing-up process. But the time is coming when, if there is a conflict between stocks, bonds and dividends on the one hand and men, women and children on the other, the emphasis is more often going to be given in favor of the men, women and children.
George W. Coleman, "Speeches favoring and opposing the Initiative and Referendum," Debates in the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention 1917-1918, Vol. 2, (1918).
A man should also take heart that life is like a revolving wheel, and in the end he or his son or his son's son may be reduced to taking tzedaka. He should not think, therefore, "How shall I diminish my property in order to give to the poor." Instead, he should realize that his property is not his own, but only deposited with him in trust to do with as the Depositor (God) wishes.
Shlomo Ganzfried as translated by George Horowith in The Spirit of the Jewish Law (New York: 1953).
Gregory I, as quoted in George D. Herron, Between Caesar and Jesus (1899), pp. 111-112.
Robert Hale, “Coercion and Distribution in a Supposedly Non-Coercive State,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Sep., 1923), pp. 470-494.
Poor, wretched, and stupid peoples, nations determined on your own misfortune and blind to your own good! You let yourselves be deprived before your own eyes of the best part of your revenues; your fields are plundered, your homes robbed, your family heirlooms taken away. You live in such a way that you cannot claim a single thing as your own; and it would seem that you consider yourselves lucky to be loaned your property, your families, and your very lives. All this havoc, this misfortune, this ruin, descends upon you not from alien foes, but from the one enemy whom you yourselves render as powerful as he is. ... What could he do to you if you yourselves did not connive with the thief who plunders you?
It will perhaps be objected to this, that “if gathering the acorns, or other fruits of the earth, etc. makes a right to them, then any one may engross as much as he will.” To which I answer, Not so. The same law of nature, that does by this means give us property, does also bound that property too. God has given us all things richly ... But how far has he given it us? To enjoy. As much as any one can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils, so much he may by his labor fix a property in: whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others.
John Locke, Two Treatises of Civil Government, pp. 355-356.
Luke the Evangelist, Acts of the Apostles 2:44-45 NIV.
James Madison, "Property", National Gazette (March 29, 1792) in Gaillard Hunt, ed., The Writings of James Madison vol. 6 (1906), p. 101. These words are inscribed in the Madison Memorial Hall, Library of Congress James Madison Memorial Building.
C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (1956), p. 14.
Jesus, as reported by Matthew the Apostle, Matthew 19:21 NIV.
We are a band of brothers and native to the soil, fighting for the property we gained by honest toil.
Harry McCarthy, "The Bonnie Blue Flag" (1861).
Thomas Müntzer, in Revelation and Revolution: Basic Writings of Thomas Müntzer (1993), p. 200.
Thomas Müntzer, Letter to the Princes, as cited in Transforming Faith Communities: A Comparative Study of Radical Christianity, p. 173.
The doctrines held by the early Fathers of the Church on the nature of property are perfectly uniform. They almost all admit that wealth is the fruit of usurpation, and, considering the rich man as holding the patrimony of the poor, maintain that riches should only serve to relieve the indigent; to refuse to assist the poor is, consequently, worse than to rob the rich. According to the fathers, all was in common in the beginning: the distinctions mine and thine, in other words, individual property, came with the spirit of evil.
It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property.
If it had pleased them [the legislators] to order that this wealth, after having been possessed by fathers during their life, should return to the republic after their death, you would have no reason to complain of it.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Discourses on the Condition of the Great.
The whole title by which you possess your property, is not a title of nature but of a human institution.
Owners are the shareholders, living outside the process of production, idling in distant countryhouse and maybe gambling at the exchange. A shareholder has no direct connection with the work. His property does not consist in tools of him to work; with his property consists simply in pieces of paper, in shares of enterprises of which he does not even know the hereabouts. His function in society is that of a parasite. His ownership does not mean that he commands and directs the machines; this is the sole right of the director. It means only that he may claim a certain amount of money without having to work for it. The property in hand, his shares, are certificates showing his right - guaranteed by law and government, by courts and police - to participate in the profits; titles of companionship in that large Society for Exploitation of the World, that is capitalism.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What is Property? (1840), Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution". Alternately translated as "Property is robbery!"
What Allah has bestowed on His Messenger ... belongs to Allah, to His Messenger and to kindred and orphans, the needy and the wayfarer; in order that it may not (merely) make a circuit between the wealthy among you.
In every civilized society property rights must be carefully safeguarded; ordinarily, and in the great majority of cases, human rights and property rights are fundamentally and in the long run identical.
Bertrand Russell, The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, 2009.
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776), V.i.b.12 (Part II).
The course of wisdom is neither to attack private property in general nor to defend it in general; for things are not similar in quality, merely because they are identical in name. It is to discriminate between the various concrete embodiments of what, in itself, is, after all, little more than an abstraction.
Precisely in proportion as it is important to preserve the property which a man has in the results of his own efforts, is it important to abolish that which he has in the results of the efforts of someone else.
R. H. Tawney, The Acquisitive Society (1920), p. 70.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 17.
The freest government, if it could exist, would not be long acceptable, if the tendency of the laws were to create a rapid accumulation of property in few hands, and to render the great mass of the population dependent and penniless. In such a case, the popular power would be likely to break in upon the rights of property, or else the influence of property to limit and control the exercise of popular power. Universal suffrage, for example, could not long exist in a community where there was great inequality of property…. In the nature of things, those who have not property, and see their neighbors possess much more than they think them to need, cannot be favorable to laws made for the protection of property. When this class becomes numerous, it grows clamorous. It looks on property as its prey and plunder, and is naturally ready, at all times, for violence and revolution.
Daniel Webster, "First Settlement of New England", speech delivered at Plymouth, Massachusetts (December 22, 1820), to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster (1903), vol. 1, p. 214.
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (1972), p. 78.
Things of the senses are real if considered as perceptible things, but unreal if considered as goods.
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (1972), p. 45.
Jonathan Wolff, Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal State (1991), p. 106.
If I take the wages of everyone here, individually it means nothing, but collectively all of the earning power or wages that you earned in one week would make me wealthy. And if I could collect it for a year, I'd be rich beyond dreams. Now, when you see this, and then you stop and consider the wages that were kept back from millions of Black people, not for one year but for three hundred and ten years, you'll see how this country got so rich so fast. And what made the economy as strong as it is today. And all that slave labor that was amassed in unpaid wages, is due someone today. And you're not giving us anything when we say that it's time to collect.
Give a man the secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden; give him a nine years lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert…. The magic of PROPERTY turns sand to gold.
Arthur Young, journal entries for July 30 and November 7, 1787, Travels…, 2d ed. (1794, reprinted 1970), vol. 1, p. 51, 88.
Quotes reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 210-212.
A thing which is not in esse but in apparent expectancy is regarded in law.
Lord Edward Coke, Case of Sutton's Hospital (1612), 5 Rep. 303.
The power to regulate the disposal of property after death ought not to extend to doing it in a manner tending to the prejudice of the living.
Lord Truro, Brownlow v. Egerton (1854), 23 L. J. Rep. Part 5 (N. S.), Ch. 403.
The Court has of late years been much more ready to decide questions as to interests in futuro than it formerly was.
Kekeunch, J., In re Freme's Contract (1895), L. R. 2 C. D. , p. 262.
Lord Mansfield, Goodtitle v. Duke of Chandos (1760), 2 Burr. Part IV., p. 1076.
Entry is not equivalent to possession.
Fry, J., Edwick v. Hawkes (1881), L. R. 18 C. D. 203.
We must not be frighted when a matter of property comes before us by saying it belongs to the Parliament; we must exert the Queen's jurisdiction.
Holt, C.J., Ashby v. White (1703), Lord Raym. 938.
The law is so benignant in this country that it sometimes contradicts itself in order to preserve estates.
Lord St. Leonards, Brownlow v. Egerton (1854), 23 L. J. Rep. Part 5 (N. S.), Ch. 407.
Personal property has no locality. … The meaning of that is, not that personal property has no visible locality, but that it is subject to that law which governs the person of the owner. With respect to the disposition of it, with respect to the transmission of it, either by succession or the act of the party, it follows the law of the person. The owner in any country may dispose of personal property. If he dies, it is not the law of the country in which the property is, but the law of the country of which he was a subject, that will regulate the succession.
Lord Loughborough, Sill v. Worswick (1791), 1 H. Bl. 690.
Monuments are memorials of great use in questions of descent, and in matters of family interest; decency and propriety likewise require that they should not remain in a state of ruin and decay.
Sir William Scott, Bardin v. Calcott (1789), 1 Hagg. Con. Rep. 16.
There is nothing illegal in keeping up a tomb; on the contrary, it is a very laudable thing to do.
Nathaniel Lindley, Baron Lindley, L.J., In re Tyler, Tyler v. Tyler (1891), L. R. 3 C. D. , p. 258.
I am afraid that the state of some other noble monuments of the finest Gothic architecture in this kingdom is not very consoling; that they are mouldering and crumbling into ruins. I have heard it observed with grave and serious regret, that no funds have been appropriated for the preservation of them: perhaps a time will come when that which I take to be an error will be corrected, and when it will be found that all the property of the Church is a fund for the sustentation of those fabrics.
Eyre, C.J., Jefferson v. Bishop of Durham (1797), 2 Bos. & Pull. 129.
Richards, L.C.B., Hitchcock v. Giddings (1817), 4 Price, 135.
I may use mine own as I will.
Sir Henry Hobart, 1st Baronet, C.J., Robins v. Barnes (1614), Lord Hobart's Rep. 131.
I know of no case in which you are to have a judicial proceeding, by which a man is to be deprived of any part of his property, without his having an opportunity of being heard.
Bayley, B., Capel v. Child (1832), 2 C. & J. 579.
Confucius, cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 185.
Quoted by Thomas Denison, Rex. v. Inhabitants of Aythrop Rooding (1756), Burrow (Settlement Cases,), 414; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 99.

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