E. F. Schumacher Quotes

For as labor cannot produce without the use of land, the denial of the equal right to the use of land is necessarily the denial of the labor to its own produce.

No man should be allowed to own any land he does not use.

Nationalization of Land

We will accelerate our land redistribution program not only to redress a grave historical injustice but also to bring more producers into the agricultural sector and to make more land available for cultivation.

The hated system of land tenure, so contributory to general unrest in Asia, has been abolished. Every farmer is now accorded the right and dignity of ownership of the land he long has tilled.

Land monopoly is not only monopoly, but it is by far the greatest of monopolies; it is a perpetual monopoly, and it is the mother of all other forms of monopoly.

It is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.

Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. The small landowners are the most precious part of a state

Prejudices of Political Economists against the Common Ownership in Land

How could the plebeians be restored to the land without dispossessing those who possessed it, who were themselves part of the people and held estates left to them by their forefathers by a kind of right.

There is land in Colombia, fortunately, for everybody. We don't have to expropriate land from people who are cultivating that land legally.

No one in the United States has the right to own millions of acres of American land, I don't care how they came by it.

Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality.

As it becomes more and more difficult to get land, so will the virtual enslavement of the laboring-classe s go on. As the value of land rises, more and more of the earnings of labor will be demanded for the use of land, until finally nothing is left to laborers but the wages of slavery -- a bare living.

Revolution is always based on land. Revolution is never based on begging somebody for an integrated cup of coffee.

Who ordained that a few should have the land of Britain as a perquisite, who made 10,000 people owners of the soil and the rest of us trespassers in the land of our birth?

If a thousand shares of stocks or bonds make nothing, you pay nothing. But on a thousand acres of land you pay enough to support half the community who own no land and pay no taxes.

The whole notion of land property rights in the Arab world is different from that in Europe.

Land ownership has never been a problem. People have access to land. The peasants cannot complain about land ownership.

Furthermore, the unearned increment from land appears in the United States as a gain to the first comers, who have here laid the foundations of a new State.

As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.

Power always follows Property. This I believe to be as infallible a Maxim, in Politicks, as, that Action and Re-action are equal, is in Mechanicks. Nay I believe We may advance one Step farther and affirm that the Ballance of Power in a Society, accompanies the Ballance of Property in Land. The only possible Way then of preserving the Ballance of Power on the side of equal Liberty and public Virtue, is to make the Acquisition of Land easy to every Member of Society: to make a Division of the Land into Small Quantities, So that the Multitude may be possessed of landed Estates. If the Multitude is possessed of the Ballance of real Estate, the Multitude will have the Ballance of Power, and in that Case the Multitude will take Care of the Liberty, Virtue, and Interest of the Multitude in all Acts of Government.

Each landless citizen may occupy and appropriate a small allotment of the National Domain free of charge.

The fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to none.

The equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air—it is a right proclaimed by their very existence.