Homesteading Quotes

• My people were homesteading in Colorado before Emancipation.

  Pam Grier

  People, Colorado, Emancipation

  87 Copy quote

• The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Art, Garden, Land

  61 Copy quote

• There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.

  Aldo Leopold

  Spiritual, Two, Supposing That

  Aldo Leopold (1989). “A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There”, p.6, Oxford University Press, USA

  63 Copy quote

  Show source

• The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources, the whole vast challenge of a continent waiting to be exploited, combined to produce a prevailing materialism and an American drive bent as much, if not more, on money, property, and power than was true of the Old World from which we had fled.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Money, Waiting, Challenges

  Barbara W. Tuchman (2011). “Practicing History: Selected Essays”, p.305, Random House

  63 Copy quote

  Show source

• The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Farming, States, Farmers

  Thomas Jefferson, Jean M. Yarbrough (1963). “The Essential Jefferson”, p.18, Hackett Publishing

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Simplicity in its essence demands neither a vow of poverty nor a life of rural homesteading. As an ethic of self-conscious material moderation, it can be practiced in cities and suburbs, townhouses and condominiums. It requires neither a log cabin nor a hairshirt but a deliberate ordering of priorities so as to distinguish between the necessary and superfluous, useful and wasteful, beautiful and vulgar.

  David Shi

  Beautiful, Self, Essence

  9 Copy quote

• The free, independent spirit who commits himself to no dogma and will not decide in favor of any party has no homestead on earth.

  Stefan Zweig

  Party, Independent, Favors

  13 Copy quote

• The libertarian view is that human actors are self-owners and these self-owners are capable of appropriating unowned scarce resources by Lockean homesteading − some type of first use or embordering activity. Obviously, an actor must already own his body if he is to be a homesteader; self-ownership is not acquired by homesteading but rather is presupposed in any act or defense of homesteading.

  Stephan Kinsella

  Self, Views, Defense

  "Stephan Kinsella on the Logic of Libertarianism and Why Intellectual Property Doesn't Exist". Interview with Anthony Wile, www.thedailybell.com. March 18, 2012.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pa did not like a country so old and worn out that the hunting was poor. He wanted to go west. For two years he had wanted to go west and take a homestead, but Ma did not want to leave the settled country.

  Laura Ingalls Wilder

  Country, Hunting, Years

  Laura Ingalls Wilder (1953). “By the Shores of Silver Lake”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• A farmer travelling with his load Picked up a horseshoe on the road, And nailed if fast to his barn door, That luck might down upon him pour; That every blessing known in life Might crown his homestead and his wife, And never any kind of harm Descend upon his growing farm.

  James Thomas Fields

  Blessing, Journey, Doors

  James Thomas Fields, “The Lucky Horseshoe”

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• In 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, a bill opening one half million square miles of territory in the western United States for settlement.

  Peter Agre

  Gdp, Squares, Half

  7 Copy quote

• At the time I attempted to purchase the rights back for the 3 Homestead records, but the owner demanded an outrageous sum in the neighborhood of $10,000, about 10 times more money than I could get my hands on at the time.

  Marc Edwards

  Hands, Rights, Records

  7 Copy quote

• In more than one respect, the exploring of the Solar System and homesteading other worlds constitutes the beginning, much more than the end, of history.

  Carl Sagan

  Other Worlds, Ends, Solar System

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.344, Ballantine Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Astolaine Bombast, catalogue woman, ordered up like a rare steak, 'plees make shore she is pritty and a whyt gurl if you have enny'.Well, she's pritty enough for homesteading but takes no ribbons at the fair. After three dead babies that fellow wanted his money back, pack her up in a box and ship her east to the wife factory.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Baby, Wife, Ships

  4 Copy quote