Leo XIII Quotes

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

Property is proper to man.

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

Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body and the work of his hands are properly his.

All men are born equally free and independent, and have certain natural, inherent and unalienable rights, amongst which are the enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety

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 diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to an uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.

Each of us has a natural right, from God, to defend his person, his liberty, and his property.

Establish democracy ... based on human rights as superior to property rights.

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.

Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, thirdly to property.

Every man is born with a double right. First, a right of freedom to his person, …. Secondly, a right before any other man, to inherit, with his brethren, his father's goods.

All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.

… since the right of possessing goods privately has been conferred not by man's law, but by nature, public authority cannot abolish it, but can only control its exercise and bring it into conformity with the common weal

The rights to life, liberty and property were not meant to be subject to the vagaries of majority rule.

Personally I think that private property has a right to be defended. Our civilisation is built up on property, and can only be defended by private property.

A right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings.

Without property rights, no other rights are possible.

Freedom is not an empty sound; it is not an abstract idea; it is not a thing that nobody can feel. It means, - and it means nothing else, - the full and quiet enjoyment of your own property. If you have not this, if this be not well secured to you, you may call yourself what you will, but you are a slave.

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.

In fact, a fundamental interdependence exists between the personal right to liberty and the personal right to property.

As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.

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

Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.