Property Quotes - Page 5

• But when Lust By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk, But most by lewd and lavish arts of sin, Lets in defilement to the inward parts, The soul grows clotted by contagion, Imbodies and imbrutes, till she quite lose The divine property of her first being.

  John Milton

  Art, Soul, Lust

  John Milton, “Comus”

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• Property isn't theft: it's nothing.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Theft

  Fernando Pessoa (2002). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.496, Penguin UK

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• The walking delegates of a higher civilization, who have nothing to divide, look upon the notion of property as a purely artificial creation of human society. According to these advanced philosophers, the time will come when no man shall be allowed to call anything his. The beneficent law which takes away an author's rights in his own books just at the period when old age is creeping upon him seems to me a handsome stride toward the longed-for millennium.

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Book, Men, Rights

  THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH (1903). “PONKAPOG PAPERS”

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• The difference between [socialism and fascism] is superficial and purely formal, but it is significant psychologically: it brings the authoritarian nature of a planned economy crudely into the open. The main characteristic of socialism (and of communism) is public ownership of the means of production, and, therefore, the abolition of private property. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal.

  Ayn Rand

  Mean, Power, Men

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• Under fascism, citizens retain the responsibilities of owning property, without freedom to act and without any of the advantages of ownership. Under socialism, government officials acquire all the advantages of ownership, without any of the responsibilities, since they do not hold title to the property, but merely the right to use it -- at least until the next purge. In either case, the government officials hold the economic, political and legal power of life or death over the citizens.

  Ayn Rand

  Responsibility, Government, Political

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• Where there's property, there's theft.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Stealing, Theft

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• Isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties being definable and observable only through their interaction with other systems .

  Niels Bohr

  Interaction With Others, Isolated, Materials

  Niels Bohr, Leon Rosenfeld (1985). “Collected works”

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• Nothing is more human than for man to desire naturally things impossible to his nature. It is, indeed, the property of a nature which is not closed up in matter like the nature of physical things, but which is intellectual or infinitized by the spirit. It is the property of a metaphysical nature. Such desires reach for the infinite, because the intellect thirsts for being and being is infinite.

  Jacques Maritain

  Men, Intellectual, Desire

  Jacques Maritain (2015). “Approaches to God”, p.72, Paulist Press

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• The property qualifications for federal office that the framers of the Constitution expressly chose to exclude for demonstrating an unseemly "veneration of wealth " are now de facto in force and higher than the Founding Fathers could have imagined.

  Bill Moyers

  Father, Office, Constitution

  "Moyers on Democracy". Book by Bill D. Moyers. Introduction, p. 3, 2008.

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• We're creating an ownership society in this country, where more Americans than ever will be able to open up their door where they live and say, welcome to my house, welcome to my piece of property.

  George W. Bush

  Country, Creating, Doors

  President's Remarks to the National Association of Home Builders, Columbus, Ohio, georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov. October 02, 2004.

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• Life is not the unique property of Earth. Nor is life in the shape of human beings. Life takes many forms on other planets and far stars, forms that would seem bizarre to humans, as human life is bizarre to other life-forms.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Life, Stars, Unique

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• The poetical tendency of the present and of the preceding century has been divided in a manner singularly curious. One loud and conspicuous faction of bards, giving way to the corrupt influences of a decaying general culture, seems to have abandoned all the properties of versification and reason in its mad scramble after sensational novelty; whilst the other and quieter school constituting a more logical evolution from the poesy of the Georgian period, demands an accuracy of rhyme and metre unknown even to the polished artists of the age of Pope.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  School, Artist, Mad

  "The Allowable Rhyme". Book by H. P. Lovecraft, 1915.

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• Von Neumann languages do not have useful properties for reasoning about programs. Axiomatic and denotational semantics are precise tools for describing and understanding conventional programs, but they only talk about them and cannot alter their ungainly properties. Unlike von Neumann languages, the language of ordinary algebra is suitable both for stating its laws and for transforming an equation into its solution, all within the "language."

  John Backus

  Law, Understanding, Ordinary

  "Can Programming Be Liberated From the von Neumann Style?". John Backus' 1977 Turing Award lecture, published in "Communications of the ACM", Volume 21, No. 8 (pp. 639-640), August 1978.

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• Nothing makes a woman more esteemed by the opposite sex than chastity; whether it be that we always prize those most who are hardest to come at, or that nothing besides chastity, with its collateral attendants, truth, fidelity, and constancy, gives a man a property in the person he loves, and consequently endears her to him above all things.

  Joseph Addison

  Sex, Men, Opposites

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1853). “The Spectator: With a Biographical and Critical Preface, and Explanatory Notes ...”, p.323

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• An absolute and unlimited right over any object of property would be the right to commit nearly every crime.If Ihad sucha right over thestick Iamaboutto cut, I might employ it as a mace to knock down the passengers, or I might convert it into a sceptre as an emblem of royalty, or into an idol to offend the national religion.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Cutting, Idols, Would Be

  Principles of the Civil Code, pt.1, ch.13, final note. Collected in John Bowring (ed) Works (1838-43), vol.1.

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• By utility is meant that property is any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness(all this in the present case come to the same thing) or (what comes again to the same thing) to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil or unhappiness to the party who whose is considered: if that party be the community in general, then the happiness of the community; if a particular individual; then the happiness of that individual

  Jeremy Bentham

  Pain, Party, Evil

  Jeremy Bentham (1879). “The Principles of Morals and Legislation”

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• The preceding criticism justifies the following definition of the entire human: human existence as the life of "unmotivated" celebration, celebration in all meaning of the word: laughter, dancing, orgy, the rejection of subordination, and sacrifice that scornfully puts aside any consideration of ends, property, and morality.

  Georges Bataille

  Laughter, Sacrifice, Dancing

  "On Nietzsche". Book by Georges Bataille, p. xxxii, 1945.

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• The complexity of software is an essential property, not an accidental one. Hence, descriptions of a software entity that abstract away its complexity often abstracts away its essence.

  Fred Brooks

  Essence, Essentials, Abstract

  "No Silver Bullet". Book by Fred Brooks, 1986.

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• As the liberal sees it, the task of the state consists solely and exclusively in guaranteeing the protection of life, health, liberty, and private property against violent attacks. Everything that goes beyond this is an evil. A government that, instead of fulfilling its task, sought to go so far as actually to infringe on personal security of life and health, freedom, and property would, of course, be altogether bad.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Government, Evil, Liberty

  Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Liberalism: The Classical Tradition: The Economist”, p.38, VM eBooks

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• There is nothing which so generally strikes the imagination, and engages the affections of mankind, as the right of property; or that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe. And yet there are very few, that will give themselves the trouble to consider the original and foundation of this right.

  William Blackstone

  Exercise, Men, Imagination

  William Blackstone (2016). “The Oxford Edition of Blackstone's: Commentaries on the Laws of England: Book II: Of the Rights of Things”, p.57, Oxford University Press

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• I believe in evil. It is the property of all those who are certain of truth. Despair and fanaticism are only differing manifestations of evil.

  Edward Teller

  Believe, Evil, Despair

  Edward Teller (1987). “Better a shield than a sword: perspectives on defense and technology”, Free Pr

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• There is a reason for the affected profession of " anarchist sympathies" among Tories and grandees, and of " libertarian principles" by Hobbesian yahoos of the right. Among the former, one sees the upholding of the view that a gentleman's business and property are his own, and none of the government's. Among the latter, a distaste for democracy, for taxation, and for the need to consult others about the planet.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Government, Views, Gentleman

  Christopher Hitchens (2014). “For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports”, p.250, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• The Mutakallemim... apply the term non-existence only to absolute non-existence, and not to absence of properties. A property and the absence of that property are considered by them as two opposites, they treat, e.g. , blindness and sight, death and life, in the same way as heat and cold. Therefore they say, without any qualification, non-existence does not require any agent, an agent is required when something is produced.

  Maimonides

  Sight, Opposites, Two

  Moses Maimonides (2016). “Guide for the perplexed”, p.1023, Moses Maimonides

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• In so far as the soul is a force residing in the body; it has therefore been said that the properties of the soul depend of the condition of the body.

  Maimonides

  Soul, Body, Force

  Moses Maimonides (2012). “The Guide for the Perplexed”, p.270, Courier Corporation

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• The error of the ignorant goes so far as to say that God's power is insufficient, because he has given to this Universe the properties which they imagine cause these great evils, and which do not help all evil-disposed persons to obtain the evil which they seek, and to bring their evil souls to the aim of their desires, though these, as we have shown, are really without limit.

  Maimonides

  Errors, Evil, Soul

  Moses Maimonides (1919). “The Guide for the Perplexed”

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