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.

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

A lawyer's dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his own propertyat the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.

-Butler, Samuel
Collected in Further Extracts from the Notebooks (1934).

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

-Chesterton, G(ilbert) K(eith)
  The Man who was Thursday, ch.4.

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

-Washington Bailey
  Speech in Washington DC, commemorating the 24th anniversary of emancipation.

Property has its duties as well as its rights.

-Drummond,Thomas
  Letter to the Earl of Donoughmore, 22 May.

Let us draw an arrow arbitrarily. If as we follow the arrow we find more and more of the random element in the world, then the arrow is pointing towards the future; if therandomelement decreasesthearrow pointstowards the past† I shall usethe phrase'time's arrow'to express this one-way property of time which has no analogue in space.

-Eddington, SirArthur Stanley
  The Nature of the Physical World, ch.4. Martin  Amis used the phrase'Time's  Arrow' for the title of his1991novel.

As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions.Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter; and our wine will burn our mouth.

-Emerson, RalphWaldo
  Representative Men,'Napoleon, the Man of the World'.

When a Forsyte was engaged, married, or born, the Forsytes were present; when a Forsyte diedöbut no Forsyte had as yet died; they did not die; death being contrary to their principles, they took precautions against it, the instinctive precautions of highly vitalised persons who resent encroachments on their property.

-Galsworthy,John
  The Man of Property, pt.1, ch.1.

   Happiness lies in conquering one's enemies, in driving them in front of oneself, in taking their property, in savouring their despair, in outraging their wives and daughters.

-Genghis Khan originally Temujin
c.1210  Quoted in Witold Rodzinski The Walled Kingdom:  A History of China (1979).

Honour is not the exclusive property of any political party.

-Hoover, Herbert Clark
  In Christian Science Monitor, 21 May.

Property like incest holds the family together.

-Innis, Harold Adams
Quoted in William Christian (ed)  The Idea File of Harold  Adams Innis (1980).

When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property.

-Jefferson,Thomas
  Letter to Baron von Humboldt.

Government has no other end but the preservation of property.

-Locke,John
Second Treatise on Civil Government (published anonymously1690).

Every manhas a property in his person.Thisno body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his.

-Locke,John
Second Treatise on Civil Government (published anonymously1690).

If we have violated any law, it was not done intentionally. We have injured no man's reputation, character, person, or property.We were meeting together to preserve ourselves, our wives, and our children from utter degradation and starvation.

-Loveless, George
  Statement to the Dorchester Assizes, Mar, on behalf of the Tolpuddle martyrs.

No' wan in fifty kens a wurd Burns wrote But misapplied is a'body's property

-Grieve
  A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, l.41^2.

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of those faculties is the first object of government.

-Madison,James
  The Federalist, Nov.

The employment of the poor in roads and public works, and a tendencyamong landlords and persons of property tobuild,toimproveand beautify theirgrounds, and to employ workmen and menial servants, are the means most within our power and most directly calculated to remedy the evils arising from disturbance in the balance of produce and consumption.

-Malthus,Thomas Robert
  Principles of Political Economy.

   ThetheoryoftheCommunistsmay be summedup inthe single sentence: Abolition of private property.

-Marx, Karl Heinrich
  The Communist Manifesto (with Friedrich Engels, translated by Samuel Moore,1888).

   If these sketches should prove the means of deterring onefamily fromsinking their property, andshipwrecking all their hopes, by going to reside in the backwoods of Canada, I shall consider myself amply repaid for revealing the secrets of the prison-house, and feel that I have not toiled and suffered in the wilderness in vain.

-Moodie, Susanna ne¤  e Strickland
  Roughing It in the Bush; or,  A Life in Canada, vol.2, ch.14, 'Adieu to the Woods'.