Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Children learn many principles of natural law at a very early age. For example: they learn that when one child has picked up an apple or a flower, it is his, and that his associates must not take it from him against his will.

The dichotomy between personal liberties and property rights is a false one. Property does not have rights. People have rights.

Every man has a right by nature to possess property as his own.

Every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own. This is one of the chief points of distinction between man and the animal creation.

Every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own.

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.

Man has a primary property right to his person and his labor.

The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right.

Moral principles of liberty that endow a person with the right to claim and acquire property at the same time oblige that person to respect every other person’s equal right to do the same.

The absolute rights of individuals may be resolved into the right of personal security, the right of personal liberty, and the right to enjoy and acquire property

It was once a fundamental maxim that every subject had the same right to his life, liberty, property, and the law that the King had to his crown; and 'tis yet, I venture to say, as much as a crown is worth, to deny the subject his law, which is his birthright.

Individuals do not derive from government their right to contract, but bring that right with them into society.... every man retains the right to acquire property, to dispose of that property according to his own judgment, and to pledge himself for a future act.

I have a right to nothing which another has a right to take away

Property is proper to man.

In short, it is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or any number of men, at the entering into society, to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights; when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defence of those very rights; the principal of which, as is before observed, are Life, Liberty, and Property.

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."

[Property] embraces everything to which a man may attach a value and have a right.

Whilst the rights of all as persons are equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their rights in property are very unequal. Oneman owns his clothes, and another owns a country.

Without property rights, no other rights are possible.

There can be to the ownership of anything no rightful title which is not derived from the title of the producer and does not rest upon the natural right of the man to himself.

We need not concern ourselves much about rights of property if we faithfully observe the rights of persons.

Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would.

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.

Every man has by the law of nature a right to such a waste portion of the earth as is necessary for his subsistence.

Private property is a means, and neither its abolition nor its unrestricted right should be an end in itself.