James Otis Quotes

For a man's property is not at all secure, though there be good and equitable laws to set the bounds of it, between him and his fellow subjects, if he who commands those subjects, have power to take from any private man, what part he pleases of his property, and use and dispose of it as he thinks good.

No sheriff, royal official, or other person shall take horses or carts for transport from any free man, without his consent.

You see, what makes us different than the rest of the world fundamentally is our American respect and legal appreciation of individual rights and individual property. And, I emphasize - individual.

The authority of any governing institution must stop at its citizen's skin.

It is self-evident that no number of men, by conspiring, and calling themselves a government, can acquire any rights whatever over other men, or other men's property, which they had not before, as individuals.

In France, and other nations, the mere will of the Prince is Law, his word takes off any man's head, imposeth taxes, or seizes any man's estate …. In England the Law is both the measure and the bound of every Subject's duty and allegiance, each man having a fixed Fundamental Right born with him, as to freedom of his person and property in his estate, which he cannot be deprived of, but either by his consent, or some crime, for which the law has imposed such a penalty or forfeiture.

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.

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

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.

We throw to the winds the old dogma that governments can give rights. Before governments were organized, no one denies that each individual possessed the right to protect his own life, liberty and property.

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.

Government is necessary, but the only rights we can delegate to government are the ones we possess. For example, we all have a natural right to defend ourselves against predators. Since we possess that right, we can delegate authority to government to defend us. By contrast, we don't have a natural right to take the property of one person to give to another; therefore, we cannot legitimately delegate such authority to government.

Locke contended that government originates out of the necessity for protecting property.

Thirdly, the supreme power cannot take from any man any part of his property without his own consent: for the preservation of property being the end of government, and that for which men enter into society, it necessarily supposes and requires, that the people should have property, without which they must be supposed to lose that, by entering into society, which was the end for which they entered into it; too gross an absurdity for any man to own.

Man has a primary property right to his person and his labor.

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.

No man can be subject to any laws, excepting those which have received the assent of himself or his representatives and which are promulgated beforehand and applied legally.

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

It is supposed an undoubted right of Englishmen not to be taxed but by their own consent given through their representatives.

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.

If government be founded in the consent of the people, it can have no power over any individual by whom that consent is refused.

Government has no other end but the preservation of property.

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