A Quote by David Korten

In a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of institutions that give precedence to the property rights of 'the Haves' over the human rights of 'the Have Nots' is inevitably called into serious question.

David Korten

Quote Topics

Give Human Human Rights Increasing Inequality Inevitably Institutions Legitimacy Over Precedence Property Property Rights Question Rights Serious World

Quote Author

David Korten
American - Activist

It's long been common practice among many to draw a distinction between "human rights" and "property rights," suggesting that the two are separate and unequal - with "property rights" second to "human rights."

Richard M. Nixon

My position as regards the monied interests can be put in a few words. In every civilized society property rights must be carefully safeguarded; ordinarily and in the great majority of cases, human rights and property rights are fundamentally and in the long run, identical; but when it clearly appears that there is a real conflict between them, human rights must have the upper hand; for property belongs to man and not man to property.

Theodore Roosevelt

If we buy into the notion that somehow property rights are less important, or are in conflict with, human or civil rights, we give the socialists a freer hand to attack our property.

Walter E. Williams

I think, unfortunately, we've always lived in a world of massive inequality: inequality between the haves and the have-nots, inequality between men and women that not only exists temporally but geographically as well.

O. T. Fagbenle

There is no such dichotomy as 'human rights' versus 'property rights.' No human rights can exist without property rights.

Ayn Rand

If we would have civilization and the exertion indispensable to its success, we must have property; if we have property, we must have its rights; if we have the rights of property, we must take those consequences of the rights of property which are inseparable from the rights themselves.

James F. Cooper

I typically don't use the distinction 'positive' and 'negative' liberty, because negative sounds bad and positive sounds good, and I don't think that the terminology ought to prejudice us one way or the other. So I think the more descriptive term is 'liberty rights' versus 'welfare rights'. So, liberty rights are freedom-of-action type rights, and welfare rights are rights-to-stuff, of various kinds...And, property rights are not rights-to-stuff. I think that's one of the key misunderstandings about property. Property rights are the rights to liberty within your jurisdiction.

Randy Barnett

The doctrine that 'human rights' are superior to 'property rights' simply means that some human beings have the right to make property out of others.

Ayn Rand

Another current catch-phrase is the complaint that the nations of the world are divided into 'haves' and the 'have-nots.' Observe that the 'haves' are those who have freedom, and that it is freedom that the 'have-nots' have not.

Ayn Rand

We hold that the ownership of private property is the right and privilege of every American citizen and is one of the foundation stones upon which this nation and its free enterprise system has been built and has prospered. We feel that private property rights and human rights are inseparable and indivisible. Only in those nations that guarantee the right of ownership of private property as basic and sacred under their law is there any recognition of human rights.

John Rarick

Whenever there is a conflict between human rights and property rights, human rights must prevail.

Abraham Lincoln

We live in a world in which we're seeing an increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots.

Jacqueline Novogratz

The disgraceful and shameful construction of walls, the increasing enforcement of security systems and increasing violation of human rights and labor rights will not protect the economy of the United States.

Vicente Fox

Human rights are something you were born with. Human rights are your God-given rights. Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth.

Malcolm X

As property, honestly obtained, is best secured by an equality of rights, so ill-gotten property depends for protection on a monopoly of rights. He who has robbed another of his property, will next endeavor to disarm him of his rights, to secure that property; for when the robber becomes the legislator he believes himself secure.