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

It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly. – Bertrand Russell, Principles of Social Reconstruction, 1917