"The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not."
--F. A. Hayek
"What matters is to emphasize the fundamental idea in my party's economic program clearly -- the idea of authority. I want the authority; I want everyone to keep the property he has acquired for himself according to the principle: benefit to the community precedes benefit to the individual. But the state should retain supervision and each property owner should consider himself appointed by the state. It is his duty not to use his property against the interests of others among his own people. This is the crucial matter. The Third Reich will always retain its right to control the owners of property."
--Adolf Hitler, 1931
"The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property."
--Karl Marx, The CommunistManifesto
"Private property creates for the individual a sphere in which he is free of the state. It sets limits to the operation of the authoritarian will. It allows other forces to arise side by side with and in opposition to political power. It thus becomes the basis of all those activities that are free from violent interference on the part of the state. It is the soil in which the seeds of freedom are nurtured and in which the autonomy of the individual and ultimately all intellectual and material progress are rooted."
--Ludwig von Mises
Page last updated 2001-05-18