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Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist.
- John Adams

Let it simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice?
- George Washington

There can be no compromise between a property owner and a burglar; offering the burglar a single teaspoon of one's silverware would not be a compromise, but a total surrender - the recognition of his right to one's property. What value or concession did the burglar offer in return? and once the principle of unilateral concessions is accepted as the base of a relationship by both parties, it is only a matter of time before the burglar would seize the rest...
- Ayn Rand

No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.
- Mark Twain

When men get in the habit of helping themselves to the property of others, they cannot easily be cured of it.
- The New York Times, in a 1909 editorial opposing the very first income tax

The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storm may enter, the rain may enter -- but the King of England cannot enter; all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!
- William Pitt, the Elder (speech to the British Parliament describing a basic American principle [every man a king] that would become ingrained in our Constitution)

Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible.
- CA Justice Janice Rogers Brown

Where once government was a necessary evil because it protected private property, now private property is a necessary evil because it funds government programs.
- CA Justice Janice Rogers Brown

Private property, already an endangered species in California, is now entirely extinct in San Francisco.
- CA Justice Janice Rogers Brown

Something new, called economic rights, began to supplant the old property rights. This change, which occurred with remarkably little fanfare, was staggeringly significant. With the advent of "economic rights," the original meaning of rights was effectively destroyed. These new "rights" imposed obligations, not limits, on the state. It thus became government's job not to protect property but, rather, to regulate and redistribute it. And, the epic proportions of the disaster which has befallen millions of people during the ensuing decades has not altered our fervent commitment to statism.
- CA Justice Janice Rogers Brown

The right to express one’s individuality and essential human dignity through the free use of property is just as important as the right to do so through speech, the press, or the free exercise of religion
- CA Justice Janice Rogers Brown

Government acts as a giant siphon, extracting wealth, creating privilege and power, and redistributing it.
- CA Justice Janice Rogers Brown

And most significantly, if we can invoke no ultimate limits on the power of government, a democracy is inevitably transformed into a Kleptocracy - a license to steal, a warrant for oppression.
- CA Justice Janice Rogers Brown

Theft is theft even when the government approves of the thievery. Turning a democracy into a Kleptocracy does not enhance the stature of the thieves; it only diminishes the legitimacy of the government.
- CA Justice Janice Rogers Brown