John Adams Quotes

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.

Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution . .

No freedom is secure if your property rights are not secure.

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

Make no mistake. Without individual property, none are free.

Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark.

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

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.

Liberty is security. Freedom is security.

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 rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.

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

Ultimately property rights and personal rights are the same thing.

The desire for security must be balanced with our regard for liberty.

The end of all political associations is, the preservation of the rights of man, which rights are liberty, property, and security; that the nation is the source of all sovereignty derived from it...

The reason why men enter into [political] society is the preservation of their property.

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

Property, once recognized, gave rise to the first rules of justice; for, to secure each man his own, it had to be possible for each to have something. Besides, as men began to look forward to the future, and all had something to lose, every one had reason to apprehend that reprisals would follow any injury he might do to another.

…it is the peculiar function of the state and the city to guarantee every man the free and undisturbed control of his own particular property.

Security and liberty are not mutually exclusive. We can have both

Here everyone is his own master. Civil liberty places all inhabitants on an equal footing. The humble cannot be oppressed by the mighty, nor the poor by the rich.

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

I have a personal belief that you never have to give up liberty for security. You can still provide security without sacrificing our Bill of Rights.

Humanity has gained its suit; Liberty will nevermore be without an asylum.