Laws and society, compacts, were made to protect and secure the subjects in their peaceable possessions and properties, and not to subvert them. No person or community of persons can be supposed to be under any particular compact of law, except it presupposeth that the law will protect such person or community of persons in his or their properties.

But when mankind increased in number, craft, and ambition, it became necessary to entertain conceptions of more permanent dominion; and to appropriate to individuals not the immediate use only, but the very substance of the thing to be used. Otherwise innumerable tumults must have arisen, and the good order of the world been continually broken and disturbed, while a variety of persons were striving to get the first occupation of the same thing, or disputing which of them had actually gained it. As human life also grew more and more refined, abundance of conveniences were devised to render it more easy, commodious, and agreeable; as, habitations for shelter and safety, and raiment for warmth and decency. But no man would be at the trouble to provide either, so long as he had only an usufructuary property in them, which was to cease the instant that he quitted possession; if, as soon as he walked out of his tent, or pulled off his garment, the next stranger who came by would have aright to inhabit the one, and to wear the other.

Where such restrictions impose a significant burden on property owners when compared to normal use in the area, takings law should apply, and the state should pay for the loss of normal use...A healthier environment, historic preservation, open space: These are not goods that most of us should steal from a few of us. If we want them, we should all be prepared to pay our part of the cost.

[F]reedom depends on the right to property just as it does to rights of free speech...There is no human activity that does not involve the use of property. We cannot sleep, wake, eat, walk, drive, fly, swim, boat, work, go to church, print a paper, view a movie, make a speech, procreate, or engage in conversation without using property in some one or more of its dimensions. If a church cannot be owned by its communicants, their freedom to worship is under the control of someone else. If a press cannot be privately owned, freedom of the press is an illusion. If government controls all property, freedom of speech is something belonging to government, not to individuals.

Can our form of government, our system of justice, survive if one can be denied a freedom because he might abuse it?

[C]lear property rights...reduce the role of combat or uncertainty by providing clear and predictable means for preventing or settling disputes over the disposal of a resource. By reducing uncertainty, property rights vastly expand the possibilities for cooperation.

DIZERGA, GUS, Persuasion, Power and Polity, A Theory of Democratic Self-Organization, Chapter Seven

Without private property and freedom of contract, other rights - such as free speech and religious freedom - would have little meaning, because individuals would be at the mercy of the state for their survival and prosperity. The human rights fabric is not strengthened by unraveling economic liberties in the hope of enhancing other liberties.

It is also loudly proclaimed that "property rights" are of little importance compared with "human rights," unmindful of the truth that the right "of acquiring, possessing and defending property" is, as much as any other, a human right and, as such, necessary to be maintained if the race is to rise above its primitive condition of poverty.

EMERY, LUCILIUS A., Concerning Justice, Chapter IV, Justice the Equilibrium

[F]idelity to contract, unless determined unconscionable by an independent tribunal, is the very integrity of Liberty and of any economic society.

The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen, in his person and property, and in their management.

The right of property is the guardian of every other right, and to deprive a people of this is in fact to deprive them of their liberty.

The great and chief end therefore, of men’s uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property.

It's amazing to me that governments around the world will try every aspect of government control before, as a final last resort after everything else fails, they will try individual liberty.

Whoever prefers life to death, happiness to suffering, well-being to misery, must defend without compromise private ownership in the means of production.

If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.

The program of liberalism, condensed into a single word, would have to read: property.

No question has arisen within the records of history that pressed with the importance of the present...Whether the fruits of his labors shall be enjoyed by himself, or consumed by the profligacy of governments?

The right to enjoy property without lawful deprivation . . . is in truth a personal right . . . . In fact, a fundamental interdependence exists between the personal right to liberty and the personal right in property. Neither could have meaning without the other. That rights in property are basic civil rights has long been recognized.