Quotes About Ownership

todo acto de apropiación implica una dosis de violencia

Wenn ein Buch euch gehört und keinen antiquarischen Wert hat, dann unterstreicht es ruhig. Glaubt denen nicht, die behaupten, man müsse die Bücher respektieren. Bücher respektiert man dadurch, daß man sie benutzt, nicht dadurch, daß man sie nicht anrührt. Auch wenn ihr sie antiquarisch verkauft, bekommt ihr nur einen Pappenstiel - da könnt ihr ruhig die Spuren eures Besitzes in ihnen hinterlassen.

What, then, was the difference between America and Moscow? The "muckraker" said it was a question of who owned the state. In America the people were supposed to own it, but most of the time the big businessmen bought it away from them. "It is privilege which corrupts politics," was his phrase.

When I invest my money in an American company, I become an American, don't I?

Newspapermen are human, and cannot be blamed by their owners if now and then they yield to the temptation to publish the news.

When I invest my money in an American company, I become an American, don't I?" It was a remark that Lanny would never forget.

Also, in each of the three nations was the same deadly and incessant struggle between rich and poor; between those who owned the land and working capital and those who did the hard labor for starvation wages.

What the masses in America read was newspapers and low-priced magazines; also, they listened to the radio and went to the movies. If you wanted mass circulation, those were the ways to get it. They were all enormously expensive and conducted for the profit of private owners; a genuine liberal among the owners was as rare as a white blackbird, and that was why opinion in America lagged so far behind mechanical development—including the aforesaid A-bomb.

The British owned immensely valuable properties in Spain—Rio Tinto copper, for example, indispensable in making munitions—and certainly they didn't want strikes and Red commissars in those mines. On the other hand it might be fatal in wartime to have German submarines based on the Atlantic, and France enclosed in a pair of Nazi pincers.

Very few towns, and rivers mostly dry beds; a land of which vast tracts were kept for grazing by wealthy owners who didn't want settlers and money so much as they wanted space and fresh air. Only a land-values tax could have reached them, and there could be no such tax because they owned the newspapers and controlled both political machines

One of the hardest things we have to do is learn to take responsibility for our own actions. Trying to sidestep actions that deep down we know are shameful is a powerful instinct. From Reading Crimes by DR TONY HILL

for did it not mean I was losing my darling, just when I had secretly made her mine?

Jenny lacked any sense of property - she was constantly apologising to Yevgenia and asking for her permission to open the small upper window in order to let in her elderly tabby cat. Her main interests and worries centered around this cat and how to protect it from her neighbors... She fed her own rations to the cat, whom she called 'my dear, silver child' The cat adored her; he was a rough sullen beast, but would become suddenly animated and affectionate when he saw her.

As she passed her son-in-law's room, she would repeat a joke she had heard from the workers at the factory: 'We, the owners, must be at work by six, our employees by nine.

If more than one person is accountable, then no one is accountable

si usted no está en condiciones de solventar a las personas que pueden dirigir el negocio en su lugar, usted sólo dispone de un empleo, no de un negocio.

A creditor is worst than a master; for a master owns only your physical presence, whereas a creditor owns your dignity and may affront it.

God gives air to men; the law sells it to them.

owing money was the beginning of slavery ..... a creditor was worse than a boss, for a boss only owns your person but a creditor owns your dignity and can slap it around.

Le livre, comme livre, appartient à l'auteur, mais comme pensée, il appartient -le mot n'est pas trop vaste- au genre humain. Toutes les intelligences y ont droit. Si l'un des deux droits, le droit de l'écrivain et le droit de l'esprit humain, devait être sacrifié, ce serait, certes, le droit de l'écrivain, car l'intérêt public est notre préoccupation unique, et tous, je le déclare, doivent passer avant nous.

Listen, Monsieur Director, here's what I think. Obviously this is wrong. There are twenty-six of you in five or six small rooms; there are three of us in space enough for sixty. That is wrong, I assure you. You have my house and I am in yours. Give me back mine and this will be your home.

It's not my fault

With enough land, a man could become rich.

we are only responsible for the things we do—or fail to do—ourselves.