Law

"Germany must have her place in the sun."

"A power which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drum-beat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England."

"Others may use the ocean as their road; Only the English make it their abode."

"Possession, they say, is eleven points of the law."

"Why should the brave Spanish soldiers brag? The sunne never sets in the Spanish dominions, but ever shineth on one part or other we have conquered for our king."

"The sun never sets on the immense empire of Charles V."

"The king of Spain is a great potentate, who stands with one foot in the east and the other in the west; and the sun never sets that it does not shine on some of his dominions."

"Ich heisse Der reichste Mann in der getauften Welt; Die Sonne geht in meinem Staat nicht unter."

"The goods we spend we keep; and what we save We lose; and only what we lose we have."

"La propriété, c'est le vol."

"Nihil enim æque gratum est adeptis, quam concupiscentibus."

"on tibi illud apparere si sumas potest."

"What is yours is mine, and all mine is yours."

"Male partum, male disperit."

"Ce chien est à moi, disaient ces pauvres enfants; c'est là ma place au soleil. Voilà le commencement et l'image de l'usurpation de toute la terre."

"Unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath."

"Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?"

"Extra fortunam est, quidquid donatur amicis; Quas dederis, selas semper habebis opes."

"Property in land is capital; property in the funds is income without capital; property in mortgage is both capital and income."

"Cleon hath ten thousand acres,— Ne'er a one have I; Cleon dwelleth in a palace,— In a cottage I."

"Aspiration sees only one side of every question; possession, many."

"Les Anglais, nation trop fière, S'arrogent l'empire des mers; Les Français, nation légère, S'emparent de celui des airs."

"Un tiens vaut, ce dit-on, mieux que deux tu l'auras. L'un est sûr, l'autre ne l'est pas."

"Possession means to sit astride the world Instead of having it astride of you."

"Wouldst thou both eat thy cake and have it?"

"Denn was man schwarz auf weiss besitzt Kann man getrost nach Hause tragen."

"A man is not really a true man until he owns his own home, and they that own their homes are made more honorable and honest and pure, true and economical and careful, by owning the home."

"This is the truth as I see it, my dear, Out in the wind and the rain: They who have nothing have little to fear,— Nothing to lose or to gain."

"There's a reason education sucks, and it's the same reason it will never ever ever be fixed. It's never going to get any better. Don't look for it. Be happy with what you've got... because the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now... the real owners. The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls. They got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying. Lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. That's right."

"I die,—but first I have possess'd, And come what may, I have been bless'd."

"It is difficult to renounce the feeling of ownership; it is like wise difficult to overcome babbling."

"The feeling of ownership is measured not by things but by thoughts...The Teacher sends the wish that evolution grow lawfully. The Teacher can distinguish those who have liberated their consciousness. Thus said the Blessed One; and He asked in general not to think about ownership of property, for renunciation is a cleansing of thought."

"Theft will be abolished with the elimination of privately owned property."

"Laurent Gierula is an engineer, author, and observer of everyday life. His writings explore the relationship between inner freedom, materialism, and personal balance. He also writes about simplicity as a form of wealth and the harmony between the inner and material worlds."

"My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors.""

"Property has its duties as well as its rights."

"Of a rich man who was mean and niggardly, he said, "That man does not possess his estate, but his estate possesses him.""

"Ah, yet, e'er I descend to th' grave, May I a small House and a large Garden have. And a few Friends, and many Books both true, Both wise, and both delightful too. And since Love ne'er will from me flee, A Mistress moderately fair, And good as Guardian angels are, Only belov'd and loving me."

"As having nothing, and yet possessing all things."

"Male parta, male dilabuntur.'"

"Providence has given to the French the empire of the land, to the English that of the sea, to the Germans that of—the air!"

"Britannia needs no bulwarks, no towers along the steep: Her march is o'er the mountain waves; her home is on the deep."

"Quand on n'a pas ce que l'on aime, Il faut aimer ce que l'on a."

"La propriété exclusive est un vol dans la nature."

"When I behold what pleasure is Pursuit, What life, what glorious eagerness it is, Then mark how full Possession falls from this, How fairer seems the blossom than the fruit,— I am perplext, and often stricken mute, Wondering which attained the higher bliss, The wing'd insect, or the chrysalis It thrust aside with unreluctant foot."

"Nothing but what has visible substance, is capable of actual possession."

"For why? because the good old rule Sufficeth them, the simple plan That they should take, who have the power, And they should keep, who can."

"The pronouns "my" and "mine" look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease. The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God's gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution."

"The ego tends to equate having with Being: I have, therefore I am. And the more I have, the more I am. The ego lives through comparison. How you are seen by others turns into how you see yourself. If everyone lived in a mansion or everyone was wealthy, your mansion or your wealth would no longer serve to enhance your sense of self... The ego’s sense of selfworth is in most cases bound up with the worth you have in the eyes of others. You need others to give you a sense of self, and if you live in a culture that to a large extent equates selfworth with how much and what you have, if you cannot look through this collective delusion, you will be condemned to chasing after things for the rest of your life in the vain hope of finding your worth and completion of your sense of self there."

"One of the unconscious assumptions is that by identifying with an object through the fiction of ownership, the apparent solidity and permanency of that material object will endow your sense of self with greater solidity and permanency. This applies particularly to buildings and even more so to land since it is the only thing you think you can own that cannot be destroyed. The absurdity of owning something becomes even more apparent in the case of land. In the days of the white settlement, the natives of North America found ownership of land an incomprehensible concept. And so they lost it when the Europeans made them sign pieces of paper that were equally incomprehensible to them. They felt they belonged to the land, but the land did not belong to them."