Land is a common and equal property of all of humankind, which is why it cannot be the object of private ownership.
If I was born on earth, then where is my share? Will you be so kind, masters of the world, as to show me my woodland where I could chop my wood; my field, where I could sow my grain; my bit of land, where I could put my little house? But the masters of this world cry out to me: You’ll be sorry if you so much as touch this wood, this field, or this bit of land, but you can come and work on our land, and we will give you a piece of bread.
— Emerson
My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon. So long as they occupy and cultivate it, they have a right to the soil.
— Black Hawk
The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; for you are strangers and live as foreigners with me.
— Leviticus 25:23
Properly speaking, the Land belongs to these two: To the Almighty God; and to all His Children of Men that have ever worked well on it, or that shall ever work well on it.
— Carlyle
Hear me, the just Spirit of Creation, and judge who the thief is: the one who takes away from me the freedom to use the land which was given me with my birth, or I, who use a part of the land to live on and feed myself.
— Gerrard Winstanley
From the very beginning and before any act of jurisdiction, all human beings are in possession of land, i.e. they have a right to be where nature or chance has placed them.
— Kant
Did God give something to one without giving the same to another? Did the Universal Father exclude one of his children? You, who demand exclusive rights over the use of his gifts, show me the will according to which he deprived your brothers of their inheritance.
— Lamennais
Private ownership of land is one of the most unnatural crimes. We do not notice the foulness of this crime only because in our world this crime is recognized as a right.
In the time that I have been collecting nuts in a forest, a forester appeared out of a bush and asked me what I was doing there. I told him that I was gathering nuts.
“Gathering nuts!” he said. “How dare you!”
“Why shouldn’t I do it?” I said. “After all, don’t monkeys and squirrels also gather nuts?”
“I tell you,” he said, “this wood is no common. It belongs to the Duke of Portland.”
“Indeed!” I said. “Bow down to the duke for me and tell him that nature knows no more of him than of me. Therefore, as in nature’s storehouse the rule is, ‘First come, first served,’ so the Duke of Portland must look sharp if he wants any nuts.”
— Thomas Spence
In our time, people view the injustice of recognizing the right of private land ownership the same way as the injustice of slavery was viewed in the middle of the nineteenth century.
