Aug. 20, 2024, 3:45 p.m.
Investing in property can be a transformative journey, offering not only the potential for financial gain but also the satisfaction of owning tangible assets. Yet, like any venture, it comes with its own set of challenges and learning curves. To inspire and guide both seasoned investors and those new to the field, we've curated a collection of the top 31 property investment quotes. These nuggets of wisdom come from some of the most respected minds in real estate, offering perspectives that can help shape your investment strategies and mindset. Whether you're seeking motivation, insight, or a new way of thinking, these quotes are sure to provide valuable inspiration on your property investment journey.
1. “How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.” - Winston Churchill
2. “With deregulation, privatisation, free trade, what we're seeing is yet another enclosure and, if you like, private taking of the commons. One of the things I find very interesting in our current debates is this concept of who creates wealth. That wealth is only created when it's owned privately. What would you call clean water, fresh air, a safe environment? Are they not a form of wealth? And why does it only become wealth when some entity puts a fence around it and declares it private property? Well, you know, that's not wealth creation. That's wealth usurpation.” - Elaine Bernard
3. “Love is made up of three unconditional properties in equal measure:1. Acceptance2. Understanding3. AppreciationRemove any one of the three and the triangle falls apart.Which, by the way, is something highly inadvisable. Think about it — do you really want to live in a world of only two dimensions?So, for the love of a triangle, please keep love whole.” - Vera Nazarian
4. “The pyramid shape is said to hold many secrets and amazing properties. One of them is a sense of wonder.” - Vera Nazarian
5. “In the final scene of Power, the Supreme Court justices appear as a striking abstraction: Nine scowling masks line up in a row on top of a giant podium. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes speaks the majority opinion: 'Water power, the right to convert it into electric energy, and the electric energy thus produced constitute property belonging to the United States.” - Susan Quinn
6. “I knew, as every peasant does, that land can never be truly owned. We are the keepers of the soil, the curators of trees.” - Lisa St. Aubin de Teran
7. “No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.” - Gideon Tucker
8. “Settling other people's land is an American tradition.” - Ariel Gore
9. “In the first place, Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of houses above a certain rent are women. If a married couple come to settle in the town, somehow the gentleman disappears; he is either fairly frightened to death by being the only man in the Cranford parties, or he is accounted for by being with his regiment, his hip, or closely engaged in business all the week in the great neighbouring commercial town of Drumble, distant only twenty miles on a railroad. In short, whatever does become of the gentlemen, they are not at Cranford.” - Elizabeth Gaskell
10. “Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long that they have come to esteem the religious, learned and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
11. “When in the Land of Property think like a propertarian. Dress like one, eat like one, act like one, be one.” - Ursula K. Le Guin
12. “A pickpocket is obviously a champion of private enterprise. But it would perhaps be an exaggeration to say that a pickpocket is a champion of private property. The point about Capitalism and Commercialism, as conducted of late, is that they have really preached the extension of business rather than the preservation of belongings; and have at best tried to disguise the pickpocket with some of the virtues of the pirate.” - G.K. Chesterton
13. “We are accused of being obsessed by property. The truth is the other way round. It is the society and culture in question which is so obsessed. Yet to an obsessive his obsession always seems to be of the nature of things and so is not recognized for what it is. The relation between property and art in European culture appears natural to that culture, and consequently if somebody demonstrates the extent of the property interest in a given cultural field, it is said to be a demonstration of his obsession. And this allows the Cultural Establishment to project for a little longer its false rationalized image of itself.” - John Berger
14. “Given an area of law that legislators were happy to hand over to the affected industries and a technology that was both unfamiliar and threatening, the prospects for legislative insight were poor. Lawmakers were assured by lobbyistsa) that this was business as usual, that no dramatic changes were being made by the Green or White papers; orb) that the technology presented a terrible menace to the American cultural industries, but that prompt and statesmanlike action would save the day; orc) that layers of new property rights, new private enforcers of those rights, and technological control and surveillance measures were all needed in order to benefit consumers, who would now be able to “purchase culture by the sip rather than by the glass” in a pervasively monitored digital environment.In practice, somewhat confusingly, these three arguments would often be combined. Legislators’ statements seemed to suggest that this was a routine Armageddon in which firm, decisive statesmanship was needed to preserve the digital status quo in a profoundly transformative and proconsumer way. Reading the congressional debates was likely to give one conceptual whiplash.To make things worse, the press was—in 1995, at least—clueless about these issues. It was not that the newspapers were ignoring the Internet. They were paying attention—obsessive attention in some cases. But as far as the mainstream press was concerned, the story line on the Internet was sex: pornography, online predation, more pornography. The lowbrow press stopped there. To be fair, the highbrow press was also interested in Internet legal issues (the regulation of pornography, the regulation of online predation) and constitutional questions (the First Amendment protection of Internet pornography). Reporters were also asking questions about the social effect of the network (including, among other things, the threats posed by pornography and online predators).” - James Boyle
15. “In fact, if law were restricted to protecting all persons, all liberties, and all properties; if law were nothing more than the organized combination of the individual's right to self-defense; if law were the obstacle, the check, the punisher of all oppression and plunder — is it likely that we citizens would then argue much about the extent of the franchise?” - Frederic Bastiat
16. “my problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity” - Cory Doctorow
17. “Water belongs to us all. Nature did not make the sun one person's property, nor air, nor water, cool and clear.” - Michael Simpson
18. “All sentient beings should have at least one right—the right not to be treated as property” - GaryLFrancione
19. “Owning is owing, having is hoarding.” - Ursula K. Le Guin
20. “คนยากจนต้องต่อสู้อย่างหนักเพื่อความเป็นอยู่อันจำเป็น คนมั่งมีต่อสู้เพื่อการสะสม แล้วในที่สุดไปจากโลกนี้ คนทั้งสองประเภทก็ไปโดยทำนองเดียวกัน คือไปด้วยมือเปล่าแท้ๆ การสะสมทรัพย์สมบัติไว้จนไม่มีทางจะใช้นั้น เขาทำเพื่ออะไรกัน...เมื่อที่สุดมนุษย์เรา จะต้องเหมือนกันเช่นนี้ทั้งหมด?” - ศรีบูรพา (กุหลาย สายประดิษฐ์)
21. “It was a fact generally acknowledged by all but the most contumacious spirits at the beginning of the seventeenth century that woman was the weaker vessel; weaker than man, that is. ... That was the way God had arranged Creation, sanctified in the words of the Apostle. ... Under the common law of England at the accession of King James I, no female had any rights at all (if some were allowed by custom). As an unmarried woman her rights were swallowed up in her father's, and she was his to dispose of in marriage at will. Once she was married her property became absolutely that of her husband. What of those who did not marry? Common law met that problem blandly by not recognizing it. In the words of The Lawes Resolutions [the leading 17th century compendium on women's legal status]: 'All of them are understood either married or to be married.' In 1603 England, in short, still lived in a world governed by feudal law, where a wife passed from the guardianship of her father to her husband; her husband also stood in relation to her as a feudal lord.” - Antonia Fraser
22. “At one time in the world there were woods that no one owned” - Cormac McCarthy
23. “It is a policeman’s duty to retrieve stolen property and return it to its owners. But when robbery becomes the purpose of the law, and the policeman’s duty becomes, not protection, but the plunder of property - then it is an outlaw who has to become a policeman.” - Ayn Rand
24. “Bei vielen Menschen [...] vermute ich eine geheime Verfassung, deren virtueller Artikel 1 lautet: "Die Besitzstandswahrung ist unantastbar.” - Joachim Gauck
25. “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society, for modernity, and for prosperity. The wealthy pay more because they have benefitted more. Taxes, well laid and well spent, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare. Taxes protect property and the environment; taxes make business possible. Taxes pay for roads and schools and bridges and police and teachers. Taxes pay for doctors and nursing homes and medicine. During an emergency, like an earthquake or a hurricane, taxes pay for rescue workers, shelters, and services. For people whose lives are devastated by other kinds of disaster, like the disaster of poverty, taxes pay, even, for food.” - Jill Lepore
26. “Just as sex is a God-given instinct for the prolongation of the human race, so the desire for property as a prolongation of one's ego is a natural right sanctioned by natural law. A person is free on the inside because he can call his soul his own; he is free on the outside because he can call property his own. Internal freedom is based upon the fact that "I am"; external freedom is based on the fact that "I have." But just as the excesses of flesh produce lust, for lust is sex in the wrong place, so there can be a deordination of the desire for property until it becomes greed, avarice, and capitalistic aggression.” - Fulton J. Sheen
27. “As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.” - James Madison
28. “What's yours is mine and what's mine is my own.” - James Joyce
29. “I've been so bothered with my property, that I'm tired of it, and don't mean to save up any more, but give it away as I go along, and then nobody will envy me, or want to steal it, and I shan't be suspecting folks and worrying about my old cash.” - Louisa May Alcott
30. “Few things would gratify me as much as a rediscovered respect for things belonging to others. Not abusing the property of others (or that of the community) is one of the ways in which we respect others. It is an essential part of being considerate guests, no matter where we are: in an airplane, in a friend's home, in a movie theater, in a doctor's office, in a public library, or in a public square.” - P.M. Forni
31. “You are not property. If you choose to leave, no one will stop you.” - Elizabeth Vaughan