Quotes that may make you stop and think or surprise you.
On Self-Interest
IX {29} There are some also who, either from zeal in attending to their own business or through some sort of aversion to their fellow-men, claim that they are occupied solely with their own affairs, without seeming to themselves to be doing anyone any injury. But while they steer clear of the one kind of injustice, they fall into the other: they are traitors to social life, for they contribute to it none of their interest, none of their effort, none of their means.
Cicero, De Officiis
On Property
Opponents of private property, write Jean Bodin in the sixteenth century, are foolhardy dreamers. “In taking away these words of Mine and Thine, they ruine the foundation of all Commonsweales, the which [sic] were chiefly established to yeeld unto every man that which is his own.” Since Bodin wrote, many men have thought that the protection of private property is in fact the primary task of governments, and that the wholesales abolition of rights of ownership is the essential characteristic of social revolution. But if justice is the rendering to each man of that which is his own, if the determination of men and thine is the principal object of political wisdom, the poltiical scientist must elucidate the principles of ownership. What reasons can a man give for calling a thing his own? Who are we to distinguish valid claims of ownership from those which are unjust? A history of the answers to these questions is a history of the theory of property.
Richard Schlatter, Private Property, The History of an Idea, 9
On The Denial of Metaphysics
For every serious approach to the problem of property involves explicit or implicit metaphysical assumptions. Even non-metaphysicians make use of metaphysics despite their protestations, which makes their non-metaphysical metaphysics sometimes astonishingly attractive.
A Parel, “Aquinas’ Theory of Property, ” 90. In Theories of Property: Aristotle to the Present. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, p. 90 (89-114)
On Religion in Government
The Hon. Mr. SINGLETARY thought we were giving up all our privileges, as there was no provision that men in power should have any religion; and though he hoped to see Christians, yet, by the Constitution, a Papist,or an Infidel, was as eligible as they. It had been said that men had not degenerated; he did not think men were better now than when men after God’s own heart did wickedly. He thought, in this instance, we were giving great power to we know not whom. Saturday, January 19, 1788, A. M. p. 35
Source: Jonathan Elliot, The Debates in the Several State Conventions of the Adoption of the Federal Constitution. Vol. 3, 29. Online Library of Liberty.
Barry Goldwater: On Corporations and Unions Making Campaign Contributions.
“In order to achieve the widest possible distribution of power, financial contributions to political campaigns should be made by individuals and individuals alone. I see no reason for labor unions—or corporations—to participate in politics. Both were created for economic purposes and their activities should be restricted accordingly.”
Source: Barry Goldwater, Conscience of a Conservative, 35. (Kindle Loc 444 of 1138)