Quotes about Land Possession

Bernard Cornwell

‎Our ancestors took this land. They took it and made it and held it. We do not give up what our ancestors gave us. They came across the sea and they fought here, and they built here and they're buried here. This is our land, mixed with our blood, strengthened with our bone. Ours!

John Marshall

To leave Indian tribes in possession of their country is to leave the country a wilderness.

Marshall was in general very sympathetic with the Indians and their rights, but even for him the notion of treating the Indians as sovereign masters of all their lands was unthinkable.

Charles Dudley Warner

No man but feels more of a man in the world if he have a bit of ground that he can call his own. However small it is on the surface, it is four thousand miles deep; and that is a very handsome property.

David Ben-Gurion

The land, the villages, the mountains, the roads are in their hands. The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country, while we are still outside.

The early Zionists had an understanding of how they were then perceived by the Arabs who had been living in land that was to become Israel. Like most other parts of the world, the land of Israel has been conquered and reconquered over the years. The area had been a Jewish kingdom in the immediate centuries before the birth of Christ. They had conquered it from the tribes that had conquered it from the Egyptians who had also conquered it. Then the Romans conquered. After that there were Muslims, Christians, the Ottoman Empire, the British and finally Israel was formed. Throughout this entire history, both Arabs and Jews had lived on the land along with and under the authority of whoever was the latest conqueror. In the hundreds of years before the establishment of the state of Israel, the Arabs had been in the majority. The 20th century saw a large influx of Jews who immigrated, purchased land and settled. There had been low level conflict as the Arabs became concerned that with the immigration

Clovis I

My desire is that the Franks shall have possession of every part of this fair land. I shall drive the Romans and their friends away and make Gaul the empire of the Franks.

At the time he was a very young man and even his own people did not think it would happen. But he did win a major battle against the Romans.

Henry George

Property in land is as indefensible as property in man.

Mark Twain

All the territorial possessions of all the political establishments in the earth--including America, of course-- consist of pilferings from other people's wash. No tribe, howsoever insignificant, and no nation, howsoever mighty occupies a foot of land that was not stolen.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The first farmer was the first man, and all historic nobility rests on possession and use of land.

Amit Shah

In India, given a choice, nobody ever wants to part with land.

Harriet Martineau

There have been few things in my life which have had a more genial effect on my mind than the possession of a piece of land.

William Tecumseh Sherman

If any individual belonging to said tribe, or legally incorporated with it, being the head of a family, shall desire to commence farming, he shall have the privilege to select, in the presence and with the assistance of the agent in charge, a tract of land within said reservation, not exceeding one hundred and six acres in extent … the same may be occupied and held in the exclusive possession of the person selecting it, and of his family, so long as he or they may continue to cultivate it

The treaty was signed by a number of people including the Navajo leaders but Sherman or his staff drafted most of it. Sherman also had the title then of Indian Peace Commissioner.

Roman Empire

As regards the land or place in Africa, whatever such land ... anyone may hold, possess, or have the usufruct of, as if this land or place had been publicly owned.

The Romans were very organized regarding land ownership. When they conquered Africa, defeating Carthage, they found no written records of land ownership, no deeds, no bills of sale. Therefore, they opened up the entire land mass of Africa for what amounted to public colonization where the land could be worked and claimed legally. Illiterate Africans had no written records, and most areas where under the control of a strongman who “owned” all of the land with no notion of private ownership of land.

Benjamin Tucker

In times past...it was my habit to talk glibly of the right of man to land. It was a bad habit, and I long ago sloughed it off. Man's only right to land is his might over it. If his neighbor is mightier than he and takes the land from him, then the land is his neighbor's, until the latter is dispossessed by one mightier still.

William Shakespeare

We go to gain a little patch of ground that hath in it no profit but the name.

Chief Joseph

If we ever owned the land we own it still, for we never sold it.

Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain

William Graham Sumner

It is remarkable that jealousy of individual property in land often goes along with very exaggerated doctrines of tribal or national property in land.

Land Possession Quotes