Quotes about estate
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John D. Barrow photo

“Location is not, as the estate agents say, everything. We must also consider our place in history.”

John D. Barrow (1952–2020) British scientist

The Book of Universes: Exploring the Limits of the Cosmos (2011), ch. 2, p. 23

John Perry Barlow photo

“Imagine discovering a continent so vast that it may have no end to its dimensions. Imagine a new world with more resources than all our future greed might exhaust, more opportunities than there will ever be entrepreneurs enough to exploit, and a peculiar kind of real estate that expands with development.”

John Perry Barlow (1947–2018) American poet and essayist

As quoted in Who Controls the Internet? : Illusions of a Borderless World (2006) by Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu
Context: Imagine discovering a continent so vast that it may have no end to its dimensions. Imagine a new world with more resources than all our future greed might exhaust, more opportunities than there will ever be entrepreneurs enough to exploit, and a peculiar kind of real estate that expands with development. Imagine a place where trespassers leave no footprints, where goods can be stolen infinite number of times and yet remain in the possession of their original owners, where business you never heard of can own the history of your personal affairs...

Calvin Coolidge photo
Theobald Wolfe Tone photo

“Impressed as we are with a deep sense of the excellence of our Constitution, as it exists in theory, we rejoice that we are not, like our brothers in France, reduced to the hard necessity of tearing up inveterate abuse by the roots, even where utility was so intermixed as to admit of separation. Ours is an easier and a less unpleasing task; to remove with a steady and a temperate resolution the abuses which the lapse of many years, inattention and supineness in the great body of the people, and unremitting vigilance in their rulers to invade and plunder them of their rights, have suffered to overgrow and to deform that beautiful system of government so admirably suited to our situation, our habits and our wishes. We have not to innovate but to restore. The just prerogatives of our monarch we respect and will maintain. The constitutional powers of the peers of the realms we wish not to invade. We know that in the exercise of both, abuses have grown up; but we also know that those abuses will be at once corrected, so as never again to recur, by restoring to us the people what we for ourselves demand as our right, our due weight and influence in that estate which is our property, the representation of the people in parliament.”

Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763–1798) Irish politician

Address of the Volunteers assembled at Belfast to the people of Ireland (14 July 1792), quoted in T. W. Moody, R. B. McDowell and C. J. Woods (eds.), The Writings of Theobold Wolfe Tone, 1763–98, Volume I: Tone's career in Ireland to June 1795 (1998), p. 218

Bernie Sanders photo

“Ending the estate tax would give a tax break of up to $63 billion to the Walton family and $39 billion to the Kochs—but $0 to 99.8% of Americans. At a time of record inequality, the very last thing we should do is line the pockets of the rich.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Twitter post https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1090306548243550208 (29 January 2019)
2010s, 2019, January 2019

Bernie Sanders photo

“Our bill does what the American people want by substantially increasing the estate tax on the wealthiest families in this country and dramatically reducing wealth inequality. From a moral, economic, and political perspective our nation will not thrive when so few have so much and so many have so little.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Bernie Sanders Has a Plan to Tax the Rich That’s About As Radical as What Teddy Roosevelt Proposed, by John Nichols, The Nation https://www.thenation.com/article/bernie-sanders-progressive-estate-tax-teddy-roosevelt/ (12 February 2019)
2010s, 2019, February 2019

John Conyers photo

“I’m not here to tell you my troubles with the administration or — I’m happy to be on the program, because I’ve already read 96 percent of the book, and we’re investigating, but for me to start telling you what might be available and what the problems are and what the challenges are going to be, I think, is very unprofessional in an investigation of this seriousness… It’s under investigation and consideration right now. But the importance of this discussion today is critical not only to the committees — there are four committees, and how they relate to each other will come forward very shortly — but there is also the question of the media, the Fourth Estate, the press. This is now public information that, it seems to me, shouldn’t be great breaking news over a progressive news program, but this has to be investigated by the rest of the media, unless they consider this to be irrelevant or too late, or whatever reasons are, that they’re coerced or afraid themselves, too timid… I consider the relationship of the committees on the subject matter, the responsibility of the media, and the American people being brought into this discussion as the citizens, that in a representative democracy, that’s what all of us are supposed to be working on.”

John Conyers (1929–2019) American politician from Michigan

After Ron Suskind Reveals Bush Admin Ordered Iraq-9/11 Fakery, House Judiciary Chair John Conyers Opens Congressional Probe https://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/14/after_ron_suskind_reveals_bush_admin, DemocracyNow! (14 August 2008)

Albrecht Thaer photo

“An agricultural enterprise requires: 1st, a suitable person; 2nd, capital; 3rd, an estate.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

Source: The Principles of Agriculture, 1844, Section I: The fundamental principles, p. 8.

Harriet Beecher Stowe photo

“Whoever visits some estates there, and witnesses the good-humored indulgence of some masters and mistresses, and the affectionate loyalty of some slaves, might be tempted to dream the oft-fabled poetic legend of a patriarchal institution, and all that; but over and above the scene there broods a portentous shadow — the shadow of law.”

So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to a master — so long as the failure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest owner, may cause them any day to exchange a life of kind protection and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil — so long it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated administration of slavery.
Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Ch. 1.

Thomas Carlyle photo

“While the galleries were all applausive of heart, and the Fourth Estate looked with eyes enlightened, as if you had touched its lips with a staff dipped in honey,—I have sat with reflections too ghastly to be uttered.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)

Joseph Goebbels photo
Immanuel Kant photo
Robert Filmer photo
Harry Gordon Selfridge photo

“[T]he artist sells the work of his brush and in this he is a merchant. The writer sells to any who will buy, let his ideas be what they will. The teacher sells his knowledge of books—often in too low a market—to those who would have this knowledge passed on to the young.
The doctor... too is a merchant. His stock-in-trade is his intimate knowledge of the physical man and his skill to prevent or remove disabilities. ...The lawyer sometimes knows the laws of the land and sometimes does not, but he sells his legal language, often accompanied by common sense, to the multitude who have not yet learned that a contentious nature may squander quite as successfully as the spendthrift. The statesman sells his knowledge of men and affairs, and the spoken or written exposition of his principles of Government; and he receives in return the satisfaction of doing what he can for his nation, and occasionally wins as well a niche in its temple of fame.
The man possessing many lands, he especially would be a merchant... and sell, but his is a merchandise which too often nowadays waits in vain for the buyer. The preacher, the lecturer, the actor, the estate agent, the farmer, the employé, all, all are merchants, all have something to dispose of at a profit to themselves, and the dignity of the business is decided by the manner in which they conduct the sale.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), Concerning Commerce

Edmund Burke photo

“It is not calling the landed estates, possessed by old prescriptive rights, the 'accumulations of ignorance and superstition', that can support me in shaking that grand title, which supersedes all other title, and which all my studies of general jurisprudence have taught me to consider as one principal cause of the formation of states; I mean the ascertaining and securing prescription. But these are donations made in 'ages of ignorance and superstition.'”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Be it so. It proves that these donations were made long ago; and this is prescription; and this gives right and title.
Letter to Captain Thomas Mercer (26 February 1790), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 95
1790s

Enoch Powell photo
Henry VIII of England photo
John Mulaney photo
David Lindsay photo

“Brother Wantonness, what thinks thou?
Yon are the Three Estates I trow
Gangand backwart.
(in Scottish)”

David Lindsay (1490–1554) Scottish noble and poet

Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, Solace, lines 2023-20281599-1601

Bong Joon-ho photo

“I grew up in a middle-class family. Even in terms of real estate, the house that I grew up in is in the middle – between the semi-basement home and the rich house you see in the film. I was really close with friends and relatives from both classes.”

Bong Joon-ho (1969) South Korean film director and screenwriter

As quoted in "Parasite director Bong Joon-ho: 'Korea seems glamorous, but the young are in despair" in The Guardian (31 January 2020) https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/jan/31/parasite-director-bong-joon-ho-korea-seems-glamorous-but-the-young-are-in-despair

“I have long been convinced in my own mind that the enslaving of Africans brought from Africa or those born in this country is unjust; and it is one of the sins of the land, and I would endeavor to free my estate from the cry of such a sin against it.”

Jonathan Todd (1713–1791) American Congregational minister

Source: His will, Feburary 3, 1791, quoted in Biographical sketches of the graduates of Yale College by Franklin Bowditch Dexter, vol. 1, p. 468 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015006955192&view=1up&seq=482