Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

Without property rights, no other rights are possible.

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

Ultimately property rights and personal rights are the same thing.

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.

AXIOM. — Property is the Right of Increase claimed by the Proprietor over any thing which he has stamped as his own.

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

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

God hates violence. He has ordained that all men fairly possess their property, not seize it.

He has called for a repeal of the Fifth Amendment as it affects the right of private property.

No power on earth has a right to take our property from us without our consent.

... to teach the necessity of respect for the rights of persons and property as fundamental to every form of government...to teach the duty of government, to encourage and protect individual and group initiative and enterprise, to foster the right to work, earn, save and acquire property, and to preserve the ownership and lawful use of property when acquired.

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.

It should never be forgotten that protection to property and to persons cannot be separated.

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

The moment that the incontestable fact is admitted, that the slaves are property, the law of movable property irresistibly attaches itself to them, and secures the right of carrying them from one State to another.

In some portions of the country there was, and is, an aggregation of property, and vested rights are in the foreground.

Property is proper to man.

Ownership is a very complex judicial concept.

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.

Property is impossible.

The highest law gives a thing to him who can use it.