34 quotes
All men in their hearts, I say, bear witness to these truths; they need only to be made to understand it.
What is Property? (1840)
All parties without exception, when they seek for power, are varieties of absolutism.
Philosophy at Work : A Constructive Approach to Philosophy (1960)
To name a thing is easy: the difficulty is to discern it before its appearance.
What is Property? (1840)
As man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy.
What is Property? (1840)
Talents is a creation of society rather than a gift of nature; it is an accumulated capital of which the recipient is only the guardian.
What is Property? (1840)
Sociability is the attraction felt by sentient beings for each other; justice is the same attraction, accompanied by reflection and knowledge.
What is Property? (1840)
All that the sovereign people, legislators, and reformers see in public office is, to speak plainly, their own benefit.
What is Property? (1840)
The elements of justice are identical with those of algebra.
What is Property? (1840)
Now, if we are honest truth-seekers, we shall avoid disputes about words.
What is Property? (1840)
Money, money, always money — that is the essence of democracy. Democracy is more expensive than monarchy; it is incompatible with liberty.
To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right, nor the knowledge, nor the virtue.
Idée Générale de la Révolution au XIXe Siècle [The General Idea of the Revolution (1851)
What is conscription? An act of property exercised over families by the government without warning, a robbery of men and money.
What is Property? (1840)
The nineteenth century is in my eyes a creative age in which new principles are produced but in which nothing written will endure.
What is Property? (1840)
Justice is not the work of the law: on the contrary, the law is only the declaration and application of what is just in all circumstances where men have relations with one another.
What is Property? (1840)
AXIOM. — Property is the Right of Increase claimed by the Proprietor over any thing which he has stamped as his own.
What is Property? (1840)
Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is the exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak.
What is Property? (1840)
The proprietor, producing neither by his own labor nor by his implement, and receiving products in exchange for nothing, is either a parasite or a thief.
What is Property? (1840)
I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice, nothing else; that is the alpha and omega of my argument: to others I leave the business of governing the world.
What is Property? (1840)
Of what consequence to you, reader, is my obscure individuality? I live, like you, in a century in which reason submits only to fact and to evidence. My name, like yours, is truth-seeker.
What is Property? (1840)
If we pass from physical nature to the moral world, here we still find ourselves subject to the same deceptions of appearance, to the same influence of spontaneity and habit.
What is Property? (1840)