Quotes About Commons

This state of affairs is not inevitable. Humans were able to employ science and law to transform common holdings into a commodity and then into capital; we also have the ability to reverse this path, transforming some of our now overabundant capital into renewed commons.

The Tragedy of the Commons

Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

CHAPTER 92 Ambergris Now this ambergris is a very curious substance, and so important as an article of commerce, that in 1791 a certain Nantucket-born Captain Coffin was examined at the bar of the English House of Commons on that subject.

If you believe in democracy, you accept, by definition, the existence and triumph of opposing ideas. The people who believe deeply in the Internet's force as a commons operate on that kind of premise.

Finding new ways to privatize the commons and profit from disaster is what our current system is built to do; left to its own devices, it is capable of nothing else.

The law locks up both man and woman Who steals the goose from off the common, But lets the great felon loose Who steals the common from the goose.

Think of a public library, worth more for those who cannot afford numerous books. Think of a public waterway or fishing ground. All types of commons have imputed monetary value that together comprise a source of social income. As such, the commons reduces economic inequality and insecurity in society.

Using the commons as a cesspool does not harm the general public under frontier conditions, because there is no public, the same behavior in a metropolis is unbearable.

I never aspired to be Speaker simply so I could say, 'I am the Speaker of the House of Commons,' and tell my children that.

Thirty resolute men in your House of Commons could save the world.

The rational man finds that his share of the cost of the wastes he discharges into the commons is less than the cost of purifying his wastes before releasing them.

I was in the Commons recently and saw a young lady wearing a nice pair of shoes. I said I liked them and she said my shoes were the reason she became involved in politics.

The kind of taxes.. that we have today are nearly the opposite of what we want to create in our world. We can take from the commons, that which no one should own, without paying for it. Yet the one thing we can be said to own, our own productive labor, is subject to taxation in the form of income tax. Meanwhile, we are forced to pay a tax on the circulation of goods, a sales tax, while there is no tax on the accumulation of wealth not used for exchange.

Why consider debates in the English House of Commons in 1628 along with documents on American developments in the late eighteenth century? The juxtaposition is not capricious, because the Commons during this period generated many of the ideas that were later embodied in the government of the United States.

That's the tragedy of the commons? A fairy tale about giving public assets to rich people to run as personal empires because that way they'll make sure they're better managed than they would be if we just made up some rules?

It is hard for anyone born after 1945 to imagine a world where the oceans - the global commons - are not open for trade and commerce or where freedom of navigation is imperiled.

We need to start seeing privacy as a commons - as some kind of a public good that can get depleted as too many people treat it carelessly or abandon it too eagerly. What is privacy for? This question needs an urgent answer.

The Commons. God rot them. ... They never think higher than their pockets.

Fourth, resistance, as it has unfolded over the centuries, has claimed a "public commons" for "we the people" to have a voice in shaping the de- fining issues in our most trying times—beyond the thirty-nine wealthy white men who signed our Constitution. This means beyond elections.

It was in Commons where I met Laura, who, although she was an atheist, would teach me a great deal about God.

The Attlee government's decision to cast aside men and women who had fought so long and so courageously under British command prompted an outpouring of sadness and anger from a number of British political and military leaders. In the House of Commons, Winston Churchill said he profoundly regretted the exclusion of the Poles, adding: "They will be in our hearts on that day. . . .

You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.