Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Quotes

Taxation of private property, or the regulation of such property so as to reduce its value, can become in effect a form of servitude.

Who of us knows or can by possibility arrive at a knowledge of the laws that govern our property and lives?

American capitalism no longer guarantees the property rights of small owners when they conflict with private interests such as corporations building pipelines. Their need for corporate profits overrides what once were private property rights.

In matters relating to business, finance, industrial and labor conditions, health and the public welfare, great leeway is now granted the legislature, for there is no guarantee in the Constitution that the status quo will be preserved against regulation by government.

A due regard for individual property rights does not preclude assigning the state its share in national resources.

If the Supreme Court rules that rent control is an unconstitutional taking of property, it would put all sorts of zoning rules in danger.

Last Thursday, our Supreme Court backed that local governments can co-opt private property, and give it to another private entity, for economic development.

In a polling conducted by the Wall Street Journal, 11 out of 12 Americans said they oppose the taking of private property, even if it is for public economic good.

Almost any government activity can also be seen as taking property 'without just compensation.' The basic model of an unconstitutional 'taking' would be if the government threw you out of your house.

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

To say that only those businesses affected with a public interest may be regulated is but another way of stating that all those businesses which may be regulated are affected with a public interest.

While I believe our Constitution allows for State and local governments to execute the power of eminent domain for those purposes that specifically serve the public good, condemning property solely to implement economic development plans is not serving the public good.

Every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it.

Government regulation is not a dangerous usurpation of your Constitutional rights. It's just a pain in the ass.

Is there anything in the existing condition that makes the duty of Congress to put the liberty of all the people of the United States in jeopardy?... Are we going to take up the question of what a man shall eat and what a man shall drink, and put him under severe penalties if he is eating or drinking something different from what the chemists of the Agricultural Department think desirable?

Free competition and the open market system as they were known in the old days, have lost their places in the system, and that the only substitute for them, in these modern times, is government regulation and control.

All private property is held subject to the demands of a public use. The constitutional guarantee of just compensation is not a limitation of the power to take, but only a condition of its exercise.

We need property dedicated to the general benefit in addition to that intended for private use.

The power of eminent domain is merely the means to an end.

The law may do what it will with the owner of property, its just power will still attach to the cent.

We don't have the right under the 1st Amendment to act as the national program director.

Regulation of private enterprise and not Government ownership or operation is the course rightly to be pursued in our relation to business.

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

Just because there is a market failure, doesn’t mean there is a government solution.

I see the FCC responding to an already repressive society and raw censorship is the result.