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

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

Protection of private property is a fundamental right protected in a strong democracy.

The right of self-defense never ceases. It is among the most sacred, and alike necessary to nations and to individuals.

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.

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.

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.

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

The right to private property is valid, but all private property is under a "social mortgage.

The property which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of a poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands, and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper, without injury to his neighbour, is a plain violation of this most sacred property.

Every citizen has, under the law, a sacred and inviolable right to personal liberty and to the possession of his goods

…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.

Property is proper to man.

Ever since the end of Medieval feudalism, and the writings of John Locke, we have understood the importance of being able to buy and sell one's own property, including books and watches, both for reasons of economics and liberty.

We believe in the individual. Government protects our rights as individuals and our rights as property owners. We come together as a community to ensure our protections and to ensure our individuals' security. That's where government comes in and why we pay taxes.

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.

I think that nothing is so important for freedom as recognizing in the law each individual’s natural right to property, and giving individuals a sense that they own something that they’re responsible for, that they have control over, and that they can dispose of.

The protection of a man's person is more sacred than the protection of his property.

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.

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.

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

There is nothing which so generally strikes the imagination, and engages the affections of mankind, as the right of property; or that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe. And yet there are very few, that will give themselves the trouble to consider the original and foundation of this right.