Quotes about Ownership

"Property" is not simply some social invention, like Emily Post’s guide to etiquette, but a way of describing conditions that are essential to all living things. Every living thing must occupy space and consume energy from outside itself if it is to survive, and it must do so to the exclusion of all other living things on the planet. I didn’t dream this up. My thinking was not consulted before the life system developed. The world was operating on the property principle when I arrived and, like the rest of us, I had to work out my answers to that most fundamental, pragmatic of all social questions: who gets to make decisions about what? The essence of "ownership" is to be found in control: who gets to be the ultimate decision maker about people and "things" in the world?

Imagine that the whole world belongs to you.  The birch trees in New Hampshire's White Mountains are yours, and so are the cirrus clouds in the western sky at dusk and the black sand on the beaches of Hawaii's big island.  You own everything, my dear sovereign - the paintings in all the museums of the world, as well as the internet and the wild horses and the roads.

Please take good care of it all, OK?  Be an enlightened monarch who treats your domain with reverent responsibility.  And make sure you also enjoy the full measure of fun that comes with such mastery.  Glide through life as if all of creation is yearning to honor and entertain you.

Claim the events of your life! When you posses all you have been and done, you are fierce with reality.

The earth may be borrowed but not bought. It may be used but not owned. We are the tenants and not possessors, lovers and not masters. The Earth belongs to the wind and the rain, to the sun and all seasons, to the cosmic secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time.

You have sole ownership of your vision. And the Universe will give you what
you want within your vision. What happens with most people is that they
muddy their vision with "reality". Their vision becomes full of not only
what they want but what everybody else thinks about what they want, too.
Your work is to clarify and purify your vision so that the vibration that
you are offering can then be answered. 

You don't take a photograph, you make it.

You can own silver and gold but never any fiat currency issued by someone else. 

Who has not first tried to get out of a tough situation before truly dealing with it?

We don't have private property, only degrees of collectivism.

Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.

Tao can be used by anybody, but it does not beling to anyone. It is just like air; everyone can breathe the air, but no one can claim ownership of the air.

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism -- ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any controlling private power.

I don't want to own you. Don't want to control you. I just want to be good to you.

You need to understand this.  We did not think we owned the land.  The land was part of us.  We didn't even know about owning the land.  It is like talking about owning your grandmother - you can't own your grandmother.  She just is your grandmother.  Why would you talk about owning her?

One after another, then by almost geometric progression, things slipped away from me. [A] great burden fell off my shoulders, and I felt that I could not walk with ease and do my work also in the service of my fellow men with great comfort and still greater joy. The possession of anything then became a troublesome thing and a burden. Exploring the cause of that joy, I found that if I kept anything as my own, I had to defend it against the whole world.... And I said to myself: if [other people] want it and would take it, they do so not from any malicious motive but... because thers was a greater need than mine. And I said to myself: possession seems to me to be a crime, I can only possess certain things when I know that others who also want to possess similar things are able to do so. But we know.... such a thing is an impossibility. Therefore, the only thing that can be possessed by all is non-possession, not to have anything whatsoever. Or... a willing surrender....

I don't want to own anything that won't fit into my coffin.

You can't have everything. Where would you put it?