Pollution and overuse of resources stem directly from the failure of government to defend private property. If property rights were to be defended adequately, we would find that here, as in other areas of our economy and society, private enterprise and modern technology would come not as a curse to mankind but as its salvation.
- Murray Rothbard
A people averse to the institution of private property is without the first elements of freedom.
- Lord Acton
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 moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.
- John Adams
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 system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.
- Fredrich August von Hayek
[A] private property regime makes people responsible for their own actions in the realm of material goods. Such a system therefore ensures that people experience the consequences of their own acts. Property sets up fences, but it also surrounds us with mirrors, reflecting back upon us the consequences of our own behavior.
- Tom Bethell
The Noblest Triumph, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), p. 10.
Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark.
- Walter Lippmann
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