Hans-Hermann Hoppe Quotes

Almost any government activity can also be seen as taking property 'without just compensation.' The basic model of an unconstitutional 'taking' would be if the government threw you out of your house.

The exercise of the power of eminent domain is against common right. It subverts the usual attributes of the ownership of property.

Who does not see that . . . the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?

The power of the State must be invoked for restoring economic freedom just as it has been invoked for destroying economic freedom.

The property of the people belongs to the people. To take it from them by taxation cannot be justified except by urgent public necessity. Unless this principle be recognized our country is no longer secure, our people no longer free.

It doesn't require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property?

Our economic freedom is founded on individual property rights; government should never be permitted to take those away.

The great dialectic in our time is not, as anciently and by some still supposed, between capital and labor; it is between economic enterprise and the state.

An owner’s right to exclude others from his property is the means by which he can avoid “bads” from happening: events that will lower the value of his property. By means of an unceasing flood of redistributive legislation, the democratic state has worked relentlessly not only to strip its citizens of all arms (weapons) but also to strip domestic property owners of their right of exclusion, thereby robbing them of much of their personal and physical protection.

Why should I nationalize the industry. I shall nationalize the people.

The doctrine of state ownership of land … is the exact opposite of the regime of free trade. The doctrine of state ownership should not be allowed to prevail ...

The power of eminent domain is essential to a sovereign government.

[The] fundamental principal of all just legislation [is] that the legislature shall not take the property of A and give it to B.

Advocating the expansion of the powers of the state is treason to mankind

There is no such thing as a just and fair method of exercising the tremendous power that interventionism puts into the hands of the legislature and the executive.

The nationalization process will be carried out in accordance with the legal and constitutional framework, that, among other things, forbids expropriation.

There is no security of property, where a despotic authority can possess itself of the property of the subject against his consent. Neither is there such security, where the consent is merely nominal and delusive.

A due regard for individual property rights does not preclude assigning the state its share in national resources.

I would prefer the [USA] government to be the policeman and not the businessman.

While the state can coerce, with some exceptions (like North Korea) it seems to me misleading to think of it as capable of "enslavement."

A people averse to the institution of private property is without the first elements of freedom

It is no accident that wherever the State ha taken economic decision away from the citizen, it has deprived him of his other liberties as well.

There is nothing government can give you that it hasn't taken from you in the first place.

In constitutional states, liberty is compensation for heavy taxes; in dictatorships, the subsititue is light taxes.

Taxation of private property, or the regulation of such property so as to reduce its value, can become in effect a form of servitude.