#Ownership Quotes

“A poor thing, perhaps, but my own.”

“In the Greek cities, it was reckoned profane, that any person should pretend a property in a work of art, which belonged to all who could behold it.”

“Thought is the property of him who can entertain it, and of him who can adequately place it.”

“What is well done, I feel as if I did; what is ill-done, I reck not of.”

“A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life.”

“Some men are born to own, and can animate all their possessions. Others cannot: their owning is not graceful; seems to be a compromise of their character: they seem to steal their own dividends.”

“Inside the Great Mystery that is, we don't really own anything. What is this competition we feel then, before we go, one at a time, through the same gate?”

“We are taught by great actions that the universe is the property of every individual in it.”

“Whatever happens, take responsibility.”

“The instinct of ownership is fundamental in man's nature.”

“If you own a wonderful business...the best thing to do is keep it. All you're going to do is trade your wonderful business for a whole bunch of cash, which isn't as good as the business, and you got the problem of investing in other businesses, and you probably paid a tax in between. So my advice to anybody who owns a wonderful business is keep it.”

“Buy a business, don't rent stocks.”

“We like to buy businesses, but we don't like to sell them.”

“An investor should ordinarily hold a small piece of an outstanding business with the same tenacity that an owner would exhibit if he owned all of that business.”

“I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, "that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living": that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.”

“I don't think there's a thing I own that I will ever get the benefit of except through doing things with it.”

“Don't tell me about the problems - I make the problems.”

“The spirit of property doubles a man's strength.”

“If a man is running down the street with everything you own, you won't let him get away. That's tackling.”

“If it is not nailed to the floor, it's mine. If I can pry it loose, it is not nailed down.”

“Government is the people's business and every man, woman and child becomes a shareholder with the first penny of tax paid.”

“The meaning lies in the appropriation.”

“I don't think I've ever worked so hard on something, but working on Macintosh was the neatest experience of my life. Almost everyone who worked on it will say that. None of us wanted to release it at the end. It was as though we knew that once it was out of our hands, it wouldn't be ours anymore.”

“Earth laughs in flowers to see her boastful boys Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs; Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet Clear of the grave.”

“[Patriotism] ...is a word which always commemorates a robbery. There isn't a foot of land in the world which doesn't represent the ousting and re-ousting of a longline of successive "owners" who each in turn, as "patriots" with proud swelling hearts defended it against the next gang of "robbers" who came to steal it and did -- and became swelling-hearted patriots in their turn.”

“For if a thing is not diminished by being shared with others, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned and not shared.”

“If a man owns land,the land owns him.”

“Let those possess the land, and only those,Who love it with a love so strong and stupidThat they may be abused and taken advantage ofAnd made fun of by business, law, and art.”

“All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It's my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset, I've won or lost. At sunrise, I'm out again, giving it the old try.”

“The land was ours before we were the land's. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people.”

“If I like it, I say it's mine. If I don't I say it's a fake.”

“As in many countries precious metals belong to the crown, so here more precious natural objects of rare beauty should belong to the public.”

“People don't realize what they have when they own a picture by me. Each picture is a phial with my blood. That is what has gone into it.”

“If it's good, it's mine. If it's bad, it's a fake.”

“I suggest that the great art belongs to all people, all the time--that indeed it is made for the people, by the people, to the people.”

“I get the Reese's candy bar. You look at that, there's an apostrophe-s there. That means the candy bar is his. I didn't know that. Next time you're eating a Reese's candy bar, and a guy named Reese comes by and says, "Gimme that", you better hand it over.”

“I bought a house, it's a two bedroom house, but I think it's up to me to decide how many bedrooms there are. This bedroom has an oven in it. This bedroom has a lot of people sitting around watching TV. This bedroom is over in that other guy's house.”

“If you do a job another's way, he or she must take the responsibility. If you do it your way, you must take the responsibility.”

“I bought a seven-dollar pen because I always lose pens and I got sick of not caring.”

“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.”

“When the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him... a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”

“That Cabot merely landed on the uninhabitable shore of Labrador gave the English no just title to New England, or to the United States generally, any more than to Patagonia.”

“The thorn from the bush one has planted, nourished and pruned pricks more deeply and draws more blood.”

“I learned that you can't truly own anything, that true ownership comes only in the moment of giving.”

“A dog comes to you and lives with you in your own house, but you do not therefore own her, as you do not own the rain, or the trees, or the laws which pertain to them ... A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing. . .”

“His money is twice tainted: taint yours and taint mine.”

“There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle afer cycle, by force and bloodshed.”

“That which you look upon as your own you may keep only so long as the world allows you to own it.”

“How can you thank a man for giving you what's already yours? How then can you thank him for giving you only part of what's already yours?”

“We need to create a mood where it is everywhere thought morally right for as many people as possible to acquire capital.”