Quotes about Ownership

If you find yourself cluttered up and done in by disorganization, ask yourself why you seem to hang on to everything that comes your way. Do you feel obligated to keep it just because someone gave it to you? Of course, we don't want to hurt people's feelings, but on the other hand, if a gift is given correctly, it comes with no strings attached. If someone truly gives you a gift, it should be yours to do with as you please.

The narrative knows the way in which hungry peasants, in need of food from the monopoly, will pay their money, then forfeit their cattle, and then finally give up their land, because Pharaoh leverages food in order to enhance his power. In the end, the peasants are so "happy" that they asked to be "owned":

It is astonishing that critical scholarship has asked forever about the identification of these store-house cities, but without ever asking about the skewed exploitative social relationships between owner and laborers that the project exhibits

It is a great thing when I discover I am no longer my own but His. If the ten shillings in my pocket belong to me, then I have full authority over them. But if they belong to another who has committed them to me in trust, then I cannot buy what I please with them, and I dare not lose them. Real Christian life begins with knowing this.

Anything inside that immobilizes me, gets in my way, keeps me from my goals, is all mine.

The ecological teaching of the Bible is simply inescapable: God made the world because He wanted it made. He thinks the world is good, and He loves it. It is His world; He has never relinquished title to it. And He has never revoked the conditions, bearing on His gift to us of the use of it, that oblige us to take excellent care of it.

Remember, it's not "stand firm for the faith" but "stand firm in the faith." You've got to own it and live it.

Nothing worse than a man who makes excuses, blames others, and refuses responsibility for his own actions." No doubt there were real experiences that underlined the worthlessness of excuse makers for these men.

Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own

Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own

What is at stake here for owners is not the amount of property as such, but its ability to draw an audience for whom it will be appropriately emblematic; that is, and audience who will see it as just compensation for the effort and skill used in acquiring it.

Waste is the antiproperty that becomes the possession of losers. It is the emblem of the untitled.