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For over twenty years [Dennis] Hope has been making one of the most improbable livings ever heard of: he sells property on the moon. Horizon: Moon for Sale, BBC 2007
There is something that Governments care far more than human life, and that is the security of property, and so it is through property that we shall strike the enemy … I say to the government: You have not dared to take the leaders of Ulster for their incitement to rebellion. Take me if you dare. Emmeline Pankhurst, speech 17th October 1912
The argument of the broken window pane is the most valuable argument in modern politics. Emmeline Pankhurst
Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution and the one which, united with that of personal liberty, has contributed more to the growth of civilisation than any other institution established by the human race. William Howard Taft
The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said, ‘This is mine’ and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: ‘Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.’ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1754
Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place. Frederic Bastiat, The Law
No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session. Gideon John Tucker
However distinguished by rank or property, in the rights of freedom we are all equal. Junius, cited Public Advertiser 19th March 1770
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. Milton Friedman
According to Canon Law the control of all property of the Roman Church-state belongs to the Pope, the supreme Emperor. Thomas J Reese, Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organisation of the Catholic Church
The [Irish] government was addicted like a street crack cocaine addict from all the revenue that came from the property bubble. Colm MacEochaidh, barrister & political commentator
It’s a story of extravagant boom. And spectacular bust. Ireland’s economic collapse caught everyone in its wake. Thousands are moving away. Fergal Keane, Panorama: How to Blow a Fortune 2011
Ireland’s boom made it the envy of the world. Its education, young people and low corporate tax rates made it a magnet for foreign companies. By 2006 it was property that sent the boom into the stratosphere. ibid.
When the boom started to slow down the government looked around for a new golden goose and it turned to the property industry. That would prove a fateful dependency. Property became Ireland’s gold rush ... The sky was the limit for banks dolling out money for investors. ibid.
Today that Ireland seems like another planet. Now, ghost estates like this symbolise the crash that came in 2008. There are more than six hundred of them littered across the country. ibid.
Ireland’s love affair with property saw estates built all over the country. At the height of the boom Ireland was building the equivalent of seven times more houses than the UK. ibid.
What made the property spree possible was easy credit ... The mortgage market descended into a feeding frenzy. Subsidiaries of British banks like HBOS & RBS had entered the market sensing lucrative returns. Property fever gripped Ireland. ibid.
Property prices everywhere began to fall. For Ireland it spelt disaster. ibid.
From a debt of millions to billions. ibid.
The major Irish banks were dangerously exposed. And one in particular: Anglo-Irish Bank ... Anglo had made the fatal mistake of believing that property prices would keep rising. ibid.
And when he is obliged to take the life of any one, to do so when there is a proper justification and manifest reason for it; but above all he must abstain from taking the property of others, for men forget more easily the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
They’ve created ghettos of fabulously expensive property. Robert Peston, Super Rich: The Greed Game, BBC 2008
You never see an old estate agent. No, that’s ’cause it is possible to die of shame. Al Murray: The Pub Landlord: My Gaff, My Rules, London’s Playhouse Theatre
4The point is that there are two different sorts of private property. The one is private property in the means of production: private property in a factory or a mine, or in the land. And the other sort is private property in consumers’ goods, in food and clothing and furniture, in houses, in motor cars, in gardens, in labour-saving devices, in access to amusements, in every sort of thing which we actually use and consume ... It ought to be impossible to mix them up. For there is one rule for distinguishing between them. Private property of the first sort carries an income with it ... Private property of the second sort does not carry an income with it. The economic system which is currently called socialism involves abolishing the first sort of private property in order to increase vastly the second sort of property. John Strachey
Private property has made us so stupid and partial that an object is only ours when we have it, when it exists for us as capital ... Thus all the physical and intellectual senses have been replaced by ... the sense of having. Karl Marx
The theory of Communism may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto
It is from a strange mixture of tyranny and cowardice that exclusions have been set up and continued. The boldness to do wrong at first, changes afterwards into cowardly craft, and at last into fear. The Representatives in England appear now to act as if they were afraid to do right, even in part, lest it should awaken the nation to a sense of all the wrongs it has endured. This case serves to shew that the same conduct that best constitutes the safety of an individual, namely, a strict adherence to principle, constitutes also the safety of a Government, and that without it safety is but an empty name. When the rich plunder the poor of his rights, it becomes an example of the poor to plunder the rich of his property, for the rights of the one are as much property to him as wealth is property to the other and the little all is as dear as the much. It is only by setting out on just principles that men are trained to be just to each other; and it will always be found, that when the rich protect the rights of the poor, the poor will protect the property of the rich. But the guarantee, to be effectual, must be parliamentarily reciprocal. Thomas Paine, 1792
These and even more unspeakable cruelties were carried out by agents of the establishment usually in defence of property. Kenneth Clark, Civilisation 13/13: Heroic Materialism, BBC 1969
Man … hath by nature a power … to preserve his property – that is, his life, liberty, and estate – against the injuries and attempts of other men. John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government
The great and chief end, therefore, of men’s uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property. ibid.
The New Road To Serfdom: An Illustrated Guide to the Coming Real Estate Collapse. Harper’s Magazine front cover: man with house on back, Michael Hudson
Where property is in question I am guilty ... of erecting individual liberty as an idol, and of resenting all attempts to destroy or fetter it; but when you pass from liberty to life, in no well-governed State, in no State governed according to the principles of common humanity, are the claims of mere liberty allowed to endanger the lives of the citizens. Lord Salisbury, speech House of Lords 29th July 1897
All property is theft. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon