Private property began the instant somebody had a mind of his own. – e. e. (Edward Estlin) cummings

Seeing is believing, and if an American success is to count for anything in the world it must be clothed in the raiment of property. As often as not it isnt the money itself that means anything; it is the use of money as the currency of the soul. – Lewis H. Lapham

By avarice and selfishness, and a groveling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber. – Henry David Thoreau