Quotes about theft (115 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Taxation is theft, purely and simply even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match. It is a compulsory seizure of the property of the State’s inhabitants, or subjects.”

Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995) American economist of the Austrian School, libertarian political theorist, and historian

Hope

“A society without the means to detect lies and theft soon squanders its liberty and freedom.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

Freedom

“The thief, as will become apparent, was a special type of thief. This thief was an artist of theft. Other thieves merely stole everything that was not nailed down, but this thief stole the nails as well.”

Terry Pratchett book Sourcery

Source: Sourcery

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

1950s, The Chance for Peace (1953)
Context: Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. … Is there no other way the world may live?

Money , Hunger , Children , World

“A lie is an act of theft. It steals peoples faith and makes them resent themselves”

James Lee Burke (1936) Novelist, short story writer

People , Lie , Faith

“Sergeant Colon of the Ankh-Morpork City Guard was on duty. He was guarding the Brass Bridge, the main link between Ankh and Morpork. From theft.

When it came to crime prevention, Sergeant Colon found it safest to think big.”

Terry Pratchett book Reaper Man

Source: Reaper Man

Thinking

“There is only one sin. and that is theft… when you tell a lie, you steal someones right to the truth.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner

Truth , Lie

“Of course it's tempting to close one's eyes to history, and instead speculate about the roots of war in some possible animal instinct: as if, like the tiger, we still had to kill to live, or, like the robin redbreast, to defend a nesting territory. But war, organized war, is not a human instinct. It is a highly planned and cooperative form of theft. And that form of theft began 10,000 years ago when the harvesters of wheat accumulated a surplus and the nomads rose out of the desert to rob them of what they themselves could not provide. The evidence for that, we saw, in the walled city of Jericho and its prehistoric tower… That is the beginning of war.”

Jacob Bronowski The Ascent of Man

Episode 2: "The Harvest of the Seasons"
The Ascent of Man (1973)

War , History , Animals

“The method of "postulating" what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1910s, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919), Ch. 7: Rational, Real and Complex Numbers

“Property isn't theft: it's nothing.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid.
The Book of Disquiet
Original: A propriedade não é roubo: não é nada.

“I must confess the activities of the UK governments for the past couple of years have been watched with frank admiration and amazement by Lord Vetinari. Outright theft as a policy had never occurred to him.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Usenet

Past

“We stand together because we believe that upholding peace and security is the responsibility of every nation. The days of empire and spheres of influence are over. Bigger nations must not be allowed to bully the small, or impose their will at the barrel of a gun or with masked men taking over buildings. And the stroke of a pen can never legitimize the theft of a neighbor’s land. So we will not accept Russia’s occupation of Crimea or its violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty. Our free nations will stand united so that further Russian provocations will only mean more isolation and costs for Russia. Because after investing so much blood and treasure to bring Europe together, how can we allow the dark tactics of the 20th century to define this new century?”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, 25th Anniversary of Polish Freedom Day Speech (June 2014)

Men , Peace

“Adultery is in most cases a theft in the dark. At such moments almost every woman betrays her husband's innermost secrets; becomes a Delilah who discloses to a stranger, discloses to her lover, the mysteries of her husband's strength or weakness. What seems to me treason is, not that women give themselves, but that a woman is prone, when she does so, to justify herself to herself by uncovering her husband's nakedness, exposing it to the inquisitive and scornful gaze of a stranger.”

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) Austrian writer

Confusion of Feelings or Confusion: The Private Papers of Privy Councillor R. Von D (1927)

Women , Secret , Lovers

“You received your fortune by inheritance; so be it! Therefore, you have not sinned personally, but how know you that you may not be enjoying the fruits of theft and crime committed before you?”

John Chrysostom (349–407) important Early Church Father

Epist. i. ad Tim., 12, as cited in Francesco Saverio Nitti, Catholic Socialism (1895), p. 67

Personality

“I thought that a Jewish state would be free of the evils afflicting other societies: theft, murder, prostitution… But now we have them all. And that’s a thing that cuts to the heart …”

Golda Meir (1898–1978) former prime minister of Israel

Fallaci interview (1973)

Affliction , Evil , Heart

“It is not theft, properly speaking, to take secretly and use another's property in a case of extreme need: because that which he takes for the support of his life becomes his own property by reason of that need”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Life , Support

“Love without sacrifice is like theft”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Love

“What is government but theft by consent?”

Scott Lynch book The Republic of Thieves

Source: The Republic of Thieves

“That'd be just what I need: a rash of car thefts across America, committed by dedicated readers.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Cars

“On the theft of his material by Denis Leary: "I have a scoop for you. I stole his act. I camouflaged it with punchlines, and to really throw people off, I did it before he did.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

People

“Kayso, it turns out that driving an actual car is way harder than it is in 'Grand Theft Auto: Zombie Hooker Smackdown.”

Christopher Moore (1957) American writer of comic fantasy

Source: Bite Me

Cars , Way

“We hear a lot about identity theft when someone takes your wallet and pretends to be you and uses your credit cards. But the more serious identity theft is to get swallowed up in other people's definition of you.”

Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) American educator, author, businessman and motivational speaker

Source: The 3rd Alternative: Solving Life's Most Difficult Problems

People

“Jan Mickelson: One of my litmus test questions to find out what kind of thinking process a candidate has done on this, is to ask my test question. Test question is: do you think that Roe v. Wade is the law of land?
Ron Paul: Well, they call it the law of the land, but I want to clarify that by getting rid of it. I think this is one example of the courts overstepping their bounds tremendously. Texas had a law against this violent act, and it went in to the federal courts and the Supreme Court. They overruled the state law, which should have been legitimate, and then came down on the side of legalizing killing a fetus, even into the 3rd trimester. But the fastest way to accomplish this is not through a constitutional amendment, or waiting till you get enough justices to overrule. You can pass a law in the Congress, which denies jurisdiction to the federal courts. So if Iowa or Texas or any state passes a law against abortion, you can't get it into the federal courts, and the states would decide this issue, as they decide all issues of violence: murder, manslaughter, theft, all this things are supposed to be state issues.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Interview by Jan Mickelson, August 9, 2007 http://www.mickelson.libsyn.com/index.php?post_year=2007&post_month=08
2000s, 2006-2009

Justice , Law , Way , Question

“The human desire for food and sex is relatively equal. If there are armed rapes, why should there not be armed hot dog thefts?”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces (1980, posthumous), Ch. 7, p. 184

Food , Dogs , Sex

“At this late stage in the history of American capitalism I'm not sure I know how much testimony still needs to be presented to establish the relation between profit and theft.”

Lewis H. Lapham (1935) American journalist

Source: Money And Class In America (1989), Chapter 4, The Romance of Crime, p. 87

History

“Everyone knows that the State claims and exercises the monopoly of crime… It forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal scale. It punishes private theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on anything it wants, weather the property of citizen or of alien. There is, for example, no human right, natural or Constitutional, that we have not seen nullified by the United States Government. Of all the crimes that are committed for gain or revenge, there is not one that we have not seen it commit—murder, mayhem, arson, robbery, fraud, criminal collusion and connivance.”

Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) American journalist

Source: On Doing the Right Thing and Other Essays (1928), p. 143

Exercises , Fraud , Revenge , Nature

“Biopiracy (is) biological theft; illegal collection of indigenous plants by corporations who patent them for their own use.”

Vandana Shiva (1952) Indian philosopher

On biopiracy, from the booklet " No Patents on Seeds: A Handbook For Activists https://books.google.co.in/books/about/No_Patents_on_Seeds_a_Handbook_for_Activ.html?id=F0mftgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y" (2005)

“We have turned our backs on God, and given Him lip-service by maintaining a belief in His existence and at the same time embracing that which is abhorrent to Him; things such as homosexual marriage, abortion, adultery, fornication, pornography, lying, theft and blasphemy. Few have any fear of God, which the Bible says is the ‘beginning’ of wisdom. A wise man once said, ‘Most I fear God. Next I fear him who fears Him not.’ When someone doesn’t fear God, they give themselves to evil.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

As quoted in Mass Murder 'Normal' in World without God' http://www.wnd.com/2012/07/mass-murder-normal-in-world-without-god/, Worldnutdaily (2012-07-23)

Wisdom , God , Marriage , Fear

“Governments are terrorists, but they hide their actions behind the label of nationalism and patriotism: war becomes defense; theft becomes “taxation”; slavery becomes 'conscription'; terrorism becomes 'defense.' Few people question the violations; rather, if they do protest, it is because the government is oppressing the 'wrong' group of people, and not because they regard coercion itself as wrong.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: Facets of Liberty: A Libertarian Primer, (1985), pp. 139-140. (Chapter 17: “Who’s Afraid of No Government?”)

War , People , Question

“Some French socialist said that private property was theft … I say that private property is a nuisance.”

Paul Erdős (1913–1996) Hungarian mathematician and freelancer

Referring to a famous statement by the French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon that "Property is theft!", as quoted in The Man Who Loved Only Numbers (1998) by Paul Hoffman, p. 7

“[Mussolini] brought a radical Marxist strand to the Avanti! newspaper, soon doubling its circulation. With a growing audience, Mussolini redoubled the urgency of his utopian propaganda; ‘private property is theft’ and should be abolished as Italy moved through the phase of collectivism forwards to the ultimate goal of communism.”

Denis Mack Smith (1920–2017) British historian

Source: Mussolini, 1983, p. 23

Communication

“Libertarians, in short, simply do not believe that theft is proper whether it is committed in the name of a state, a class, a crises, a credo, or a cliche.This is a far cry from sharing common ground with those who want to create a society in which super capitalists are free to amass vast holdings and who say that that is ultimately the most important purpose of freedom.”

Karl Hess (1923–1994) American journalist

"Letter From Washington," http://www.panarchy.org/hess/libertarianism.html The Libertarian Forum 1, no. 6 http://web.archive.org/web/20071201123614/http://mises.org/journals/lf/1969/1969_06_15.pdf (15 June 1969), p. 2

Freedom , Cry

“"I'm no historian," said Harry. "But morals are morals. What's unethical here and now is unethical anywhere, anytime."
"Kane, you're wrong. It is ethical to execute a man for theft?"
"Of course."
"Did you know that there was once a vastly detailed science of rehabilitation for criminals? It was a branch of psychology, naturally, but it was by far the largest such branch. By the middle of century twenty-one, nearly two-thirds of all criminals could eventually be released as cured."
"That's silly. Why go to all that trouble when the organ banks must have been crying for — Oh. I see. No organ banks."”

Larry Niven (1938) American writer

Source: A Gift From Earth (1968), Ch. 10 : Parlette's Hand

Nature , Science , Cry

““Prosthetic Morality Enforcement. The idea is that by analogy, if a part of your body is deficient or missing, you can use a prosthetic limb or artificial organ. Well, our ability to make moral judgements is hard-wired, but it’s been so far outrun by the demands of complex civilization that it can’t keep up. For example…have you ever wondered why discussions in chat rooms or instant messaging turn nasty so easily? Or wander off topic? It’s because the behavioural cues we use to trigger socially acceptable responses aren’t there in a non-face-to-face environment. If you can’t see the other primate, your ethical reasoning is impaired because you can’t build a complete mental image of them—a cognitive frame. It’s why identity theft and online fraud are such a problem: There’s no inhibition against robbery if the victim is faceless. So we need some kind of prosthetic framework to restore our ability to interact with people on the net as if they’re human beings we’re dealing with in person.”

Charles Stross book Rule 34

Source: Rule 34 (2011), Chapter 26, “Liz: It’s Complicated” (pp. 287-288)

People , Idea , Fraud , Problem

“Harry Dresden: As I pulled into the parking lot, I reflected that odds were that not a lot of clandestine meetings involving mystical assassination, theft of arcane power, and the balance of power in the realms of the supernatural had taken place in a Wal-Mart Super Center. But then again, maybe they had. Hell, for all I knew, the Mole Men used the changing rooms as a place to discuss plans for world domination with the Psychic Jellyfish from Planet X and the Disembodied Brains-in-a-Jar from the Klaatuu Nebula. I know I wouldn’t have looked for them there.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Summer Knight (2002), Chapter 18

Men , World , Hell , Change

“Is the Home Secretary aware that I was one of those Members there on Saturday and I was able to observe police officers spraying members of the crowd with red paint in order to identify them for later arrest, that the police were using agents provocateurs in the crowd and that at 9.10 during the evening, when there was complete quiet throughout the crowd, a completely unprovoked dragoon-like charge was mounted by the police straight into that crowd, seriously injuring a number of people? Does not the right hon. Gentleman believe that he should go and witness the scale and ferocity of police violence against innocent, peaceful people protesting against the theft of their jobs by the Murdoch empire?”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Question http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1987/jan/26/wapping-disturbances in the House of Commons (26 January 1987).
1980s

People , Peace , Home , Painting

“Our main conclusions about the state are that a minimal state, limited, to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on, is justified, but any more extensive state will violate persons' rights not to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified; and that the minimal state is inspiring as well as right.”

Robert Nozick (1938–2002) American political philosopher

Preface, p. ix
(1974)

Fraud , Personality

“It seems to me that any cult has to have the following characteristics: One, a dictatorial leader, often called charismatic, who has total and unlimited control over his group. Two, followers who have abdicated the right to say no, the right to pass judgment, the right to protest, who have sold their souls for the security of slavery. Three, possibly the most dangerous doctrine known to our civilization, that the end justifies the means; therefore, any thing from the Moonies' heavenly deception to the violence of Synanon to the theft of government documents by Scientology, to the brutality of the Children of God, all the way to the murder-suicide of Jonestown, all is permitted because the ends justify the means and there is no one there to tell them no. Four, unlimited funds. The Unification Church with its some $50 million brought in each year by its mobile fund raising teams is duplicated by the Hare Krishnas dressing as Santa Claus or the Children of God sending out their women as fishers of men. Five, the instilling of fear, hatred, and suspicion of everyone outside the camp, of the entire outside world in order to keep the victims in line. You put them all together gentlemen -- You have a prescription for violence, for death, for destruction. It is a formula that fits the Nazi Youth Movement as accurately as it describes the Unification Church. Or the People's Temple.”

Maurice Davis (1921–1993) American rabbi

Ibid., February 5, 1979.

Death , Women , Men , God

“…after careful observation of our own children and their playmates at the toddler stage, that you will see in the nursery every crime in the book except sexual assault: GBH, attempted murder, theft, blackmail, extortion, lying, fraud, false pretence, menacing, putting in fear, robbery with violence, conspiracy, mayhem - the whole Newgate Calendar is on show, and if sex and high treason are exceptions it is only because the little blighters haven't got round to them yet.”

George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008) English-born author of Scottish descent

Crime and Punishment. p. 154-155.
The Light's On At Signpost (2002)

Children , Books , Fear , Sex

“There is scarcely anything radical about, for instance, those who say that the poor should have a larger share of the Federal budget. That is reactionary, asking that the institution of state theft be made merely more palatable by distributing its loot to more sympathetic persons.”

Karl Hess (1923–1994) American journalist

"Letter From Washington," http://www.panarchy.org/hess/libertarianism.html The Libertarian Forum 1, no. 6 http://web.archive.org/web/20071201123614/http://mises.org/journals/lf/1969/1969_06_15.pdf (15 June 1969), p. 2

Personality

“The poacher … is asserting a right (and an instinct) belonging to a past time—when for hunting purposes all land was held in common. … In those times private property was theft. Obviously the man who attempted to retain for himself land or goods, or who fenced off a portion of the common ground and—like the modern landlord—would allow no one to till it who did not pay him a tax—was a criminal of the deepest dye. Nevertheless the criminals pushed their way to the front, and have become the respectables of modern society.”

Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) British poet and academic

Defence of Criminals: A Criticism of Morality (1889)

Way , Time , Past

“It is insufficient to state the obvious of Donald Trump: that he is a white man who would not be president were it not for this fact. With one immediate exception, Trump's predecessors made their way to high office through the passive power of whiteness—that bloody heirloom which cannot ensure mastery of all events but can conjure a tailwind for most of them. Land theft and human plunder cleared the grounds for Trump’s forefathers and barred others from it. Once upon the field, these men became soldiers, statesmen, and scholars; held court in Paris; presided at Princeton; advanced into the Wilderness and then into the White House. Their individual triumphs made this exclusive party seem above America’s founding sins, and it was forgotten that the former was in fact bound to the latter, that all their victories had transpired on cleared grounds. No such elegant detachment can be attributed to Donald Trump—a president who, more than any other, has made the awful inheritance explicit.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates (1975) writer, journalist, and educator

"The First White President" (October 2017)

Men , Way , Victory , Housing

“Essentially what Lincoln said is slavery is a form of theft, the theft of labor, one person stealing another person's labor without that person’s permission.”

Eric Foner (1943) American historian

As quoted in "Lincoln's Nuanced View of Slavery Explained By Renowned Historian" https://www.registercitizen.com/news/article/Lincoln-s-nuanced-view-of-slavery-explained-by-12077170.php, by Michelle Merlin, The Register Citizen (9 August 2012)
2010s

Personality

“I think it a greater theft to Rob the dead of their Praise, then the Living of their Money.”

Edward Ravenscroft (1654–1707) English dramatist

Preface to Titus Andronicus, or the Rape of Lavinia (1686); quoted in The Shakespeare Allusion-Book: A Collection of Allusions to Shakespeare from 1591-1700, vol 2, ed. John Munro (1932).

Money , Thinking , Dead

“I developed The Great Teacher theory late in my freshman year. It was a cornerstone of the theory that great teachers had great personalities and that the greatest teachers had outrageous personalities. I did not like decorum or rectitude in a classroom; I preferred a highly oxygenated atmosphere, a climate of intemperance, rhetoric, and feverish melodrama. And I wanted my teachers to make me smart. A great teacher is my adversary, my conqueror, commissioned to chastise me. He leaves me tame and grateful for the new language he has purloined from other kings whose granaries are filled and whose libraries are famous. He tells me that teaching is the art of theft; knowing what to steal and from whom. Bad teachers do not touch me; the great ones never leave me. They ride with me during all my days, and I pass on to others what they have imparted to me. I exchange their handy gifts with strangers on trains, and I pretend the gifts are mine. I steal from the great teachers. And the truly wonderful thing about them is that they would applaud my theft, laugh at the thought of it, realizing that they had taught me their larcenous skills well.”

Pat Conroy The Lords of Discipline

Source: The Lords of Discipline (1980), p. 271

Art , Teachers , Personality , Training

“Software patents may be used as a form of outright coercion, providing protection against theft of ideas as a potentially high cost to future inventors.”

Nathaniel Borenstein (1957) American computer scientist

[Borenstein, Nathaniel S., Programming as if people mattered : friendly programs, software engineering, and other noble delusions, 1991, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 9780691087528, 53, 4. print.]
Attributed

Idea , Future

“Apocalypses, apparently, are subject to fashion like everything else. What terrifies one generation can seem obsolete and trivial to the next. Take our modern attitude toward war. Most anthropologists now think this activity was based originally on theft and rape—perhaps rewarding enterprises for some caveman or Viking, but no longer either sexy or profitable in the context of nuclear holocaust! Today, we look back on large-scale warfare as an essentially silly enterprise.”

David Brin book Earth

Part I (p. 48)
Earth (1990)

War , Fashion , Thinking

“Give your goods to the poor: Christ.
Property is theft - as long as it's not mine: Marx.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Verteile Dein Gut an die Armen: Christus.
Eigentum ist Diebstahl – solange es nicht mir gehört: Marx.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Christ

“Men remain feeling guilty, for a false sense of guilt has no cure save the truth, and this is not forthcoming. Since the citizens are now guilt-ridden because of their education and political indoctrination, they are more amenable to robbery, and even murder. If the white man feels guilty towards the Negro, he is less capable of defending himself against the Negroes who turn into a revolutionary rabble, bent on theft and murder. The state finds it easier to rob men when men feel guilty for what they are and have, and the state drones on and on about the needs of the poor of the nation and of the world.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, Politics of Guilt and Pity (1978), p. 46

Men , Truth , World , Education

“Treating a person as though he were generally rather than specifically deviant produces a self-fulfilling prophecy. It sets in motion several mechanisms which conspire to shape the person in the image people have of him. It the first place, one tends to be cut off, after being identified as deviant, from participation in more conventional groups, even though the specific consequences of the particular deviant activity might never of themselves have caused the isolation had there not also been the public knowledge and reaction to it. For example, being a homosexual may not affect one’s ability to do office work, but to be known as a homosexual in an office may make it impossible to continue working there. Similarly, though the effects of opiate drugs may not impair one’s working ability, to be known as an addict will probably lead to losing one’s job… The homosexual who is deprived of a “respectable” job by the discovery of his deviance may drift into unconventional, marginal occupations where it does not make so much difference. The drug addict finds himself forced into other illegitimate kinds of activity, such as robbery and theft, by the refusal of respectable employers to have him around.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (1963), p. 34.

People , Knowledge , Personality

“Idleness, theft, and viciousness dishonor your mother who in pain bore you.”

Mark Rosenfelder American language inventor

Some of the original tenets in Jippirasti http://www.almeopedia.com/Jippirasti#Jippir.E2.80.99s_demands, another Almean religion
Fictional sayings

Pain

“As an attorney, I assure you the law isn't a line engraved in marble, immovable and unchangeable through the centuries. Rather… the law is like a string, fixed at both ends but with a great deal of play in it — very loose, the line of the law — so you can stretch it this way or that, rearrange the arc of it so you are nearly always — short of blatant theft or cold-blooded murder — safely on the right side. That's a daunting thing to realize but true.”

Dean Koontz book Watchers

Part 1, Chapter 7.8; Garrison Dilworth reassuring the Cornells during their flight
Watchers (1987)

Law , Way

“This is where we store our bicycles. A lot of people ride their bikes to work here. And, of course, there has to be a robot to protect them and make sure they don't get stolen like R2D2 in episode two where he did a very bad job in protecting Princess Amidala from those worm things. But this robot is significantly more effective as a theft-deterrant system than R2D2 was in that film. That's why the bikes are here.”

Phil Vischer (1966) American puppeter

From Disc Two; Behind the Scenes: Big Idea Tour (00:02:28-00:02:50)
Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie DVD (2002)

People , Princess

“A resource allocation method that requires that I serve my fellow man in order to have a claim on what he produces is far more moral than government resource allocation. The government can offer, justifying it with one reason or another, "Williams, you don't have to serve your fellow man in order to have a claim on what he produces. Through the tax code, we'll take what he produces and give it to you." Of course, if I were to privately take what my fellow man produced, we'd call it theft. The only difference is when the government does it, that theft is legal but nonetheless theft — the taking of one person's rightful property to give to another.”

Walter E. Williams (1936) American economist, commentator, and academic

2010s, Markets, Governments, and the Common Good

Personality

“How great his theft, who robs himself!”

Nathaniel Cotton (1707–1788) British writer

"Pleasure"
Visions in Verse

“Himmler is the practical, working revolutionary. Instead of speaking, he organizes revolutionary cadres, forms terrorist groups, uses for political purposes the methods of the world of international crime extortion, maltreatment, theft, murder.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: Men in Chaos (1942), p. 24

World

“How many thousands, tens of thousands [of prisoners], are in for petty theft, while the 'robber barons' of our day get away with murder. Literally murder, accessories to murder. "Property is Theft." Proudhon wrote--The coat that hangs in your closet belongs to the poor. The early Fathers wrote--The house you don't live in, your empty buildings (novitiates, seminaries) belong to the poor. Property is Theft.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

"On Pilgrimage," Catholic Worker (December 1971)

Housing

“While posing as the pursuer of thieves, and the restorer of stolen goods, the government is actually the biggest thief of all. In fact, progressives have turned a large body of Americans—basically, Democratic voters—into accessories of theft by convincing them that they are doing something just and moral by picking their fellow citizens' pockets.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Source: Books, America: Imagine a World without Her (2014), Ch. 14

“Now, what about this negro equality of which we hear so much, in and out of Congress? It is claimed by the Democrats of today, that Jefferson has uttered an untruth in the declaration of principles which underlie our government. I still abide by the democracy of Jefferson, and avow my belief that all men are created equal. Equal how? Not in physical strength, not in symmetry of form and proportion, not in graceful of motion, or loveliness of feature, not in mental endowment, moral susceptibility, and emotional power. Not socially equal, not of necessity politically equal. Not this, but every human being equally entitled to his life, his liberty, and the fruit of his toil. The Democratic Party deny this fundamental doctrine of our government, and say that there is a certain class of human beings which have no rights. If you maliciously kill them, it is no murder. If you take away their liberty, it is no crime. If you deprive them of their earnings, it is no theft. No rights which another is bound to regard. Was there ever so much diabolism compressed into one sentence? Why do |the Democrats come to us with their complaints about the negroes? I for one feel no responsibility in the matter. I did not create them; was not consulted.”

Owen Lovejoy (1811–1864) American politician

As quoted in His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838–64 https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA177 (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 177
1850s, The Fanaticism of the Democratic Party (February 1859)

Life , Men , Feeling , Democracy

“The policy of plunder was the cornerstone for the welfare of the German people and a major guarantor of their political loyalty, which was first and foremost based on material considerations. The unshakable alliance between the state and the people was not primarily the result of cleverly conceived party propaganda. It was created by means of theft, with the spoils being redistributed according to equalitarian principles among the member of the ethnically defined Volk.”

Götz Aly (1947) German journalist, historian and social scientist

Source: Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State (2007), p. 291

People , Loyalty

“Progressives have convinced people that they are fighting theft. If a greedy capitalist has looted your possessions, you would want the government to do something about it. An essential function of government is to bring thieves to justice and to restore stolen possessions to their rightful owners. If the progressive critique is valid, then it doesn't matter if government does it inefficiently, since there is no one else to do the job: inefficient justice is better than no justice. Moreover, when we ask the police to go after bad guys and repossess their stolen goods, we aren't concerned with whether we foster virtue among the "giver" and gratitude in the "receiver." That's because the giver isn't really giving; he's merely giving back, and the receiver has no cause for gratitude since he (or she) is merely being made whole. In this scenario, Americans who are sitting in the bandwagon have earned that right, and the people pulling are the thieves who deserve to be penalized and castigated. This is why I've devoted the bulk of this book to refuting the theft critique. If I've succeeded, then the whole progressive argument collapses and our federal government, far from being an instrument of justice, now becomes an instrument of plunder.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Source: Books, America: Imagine a World without Her (2014), Ch. 14

People , Books , Justice , Guy

“People, especially liberals and psychiatrists, say that the two main causes of crime are mental illness and poverty. Insanity is therefore a defense in the criminal law. If we really believed that poverty caused crime, we would have a "poverty defense" as well, attorneys calling professors of economics to testify in court whether a particular defendant is guilty of theft or not by reason of poverty.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

The Untamed Tongue: A Dissenting Dictionary (1990)

People , Law

“These conditions are simply these: viz., first, that each man shall do, towards every other, all that justice requires him to do; as, for example, that he shall pay his debts, that he shall return borrowed or stolen property to its owner, and that he shall make reparation for any injury he may have done to the person or property of another.

The second condition is, that each man shall abstain from doing to another, anything which justice forbids him to do; as, for example, that he shall abstain from committing theft, robbery, arson, murder, or any other crime against the person or property of another.

So long as these conditions are fulfilled, men are at peace, and ought to remain at peace, with each other.”

Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) Anarchist, Entrepreneur, Abolitionist

Section I, p. 5–6
Natural Law; or The Science of Justice (1882), Chapter I. The Science of Justice.

Men , Peace , Justice , Personality

“I don't need to worry about identity theft because no one wants to be me.”

Jay London (1966) American comedian

One-liners

“An alert copyreader on a newspaper couldn’t believe it when he read a reporter’s account of the theft of 2025 pigs. That’s a lot of pigs, he thought, and called the farmer to check the copy. “Is it true that you lost 2025 pigs?” he asked. “Yeth,” lisped the farmer. “Thanks,” returned the copyreader, and corrected the story to read “two sows and 25 pigs.””

Evan Esar (1899–1995) American writer

Humorous English (1961), p213

Reading

“Except for the demented orphan, the living will is quite beside the point. The one time it really is essential is if you think your fractious family will be only too happy to hasten your demise to get your money. That’s what the law is good at — protecting you from murder and theft. But that is a far cry from assuring a peaceful and willed death, which is what most people imagine living wills are about.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

Column, August 14, 2009, "The Truth About Death Counseling" http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer082109.php3#.U4GtOcJOWUk at jewishworldreview.com.
2000s, 2009

Death , Money , People , Family

“They're always telling me I'm too angry
Especially when I mention land theft or rape or genocide
They go to therapy to understand themselves
pound anonymous pillows safely with a stranger
in the closed room of improper behavior
There is
no pillow I’m angry with.”

Chrystos (1946) American writer, activist

"They're always telling me I'm too angry" (1995)

Behavior , Understanding

“William Shakespeare has probably done more to damage the cultural worth of Britain than anyone else in the whole of human history. After endlessly having to study his plays on the school curriculum, generations of children have ventured into adulthood convinced that all literature is coma-inducingly dreary. I don't blame them. Portia's speech about the 'gentle rain' is in no way as stimulating as 10 minutes of Grand Theft Auto. I believe that Shakespeare, along with Milton, Donne and Chaucer, has a place in modern Britain. And that place is deep in the bowels of the British Library, where he can be studied by hardcore language students.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

Source: For Crying Out Loud! The World According to Clarkson Volume Three (2008), p. 21

Children , School , Way , History

“Grand Theft Auto IV is the gravest assault upon children in this country since polio. We now have vaccines for that virus… The 'vaccine' that must be administered by the United States government to deal with this virtual virus of violence and sexual depravity is criminal prosecutions of those who have conspired to do this.”

Jack Thompson (attorney) (1951) American activist and disbarred attorney

Letter to US Attorney R. Alexander Acosta, quoted in [2008-04-28, GTA IV sex video gives Thompson, other critics fresh ammo, Ben Kuchera, Ars Technica, http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2008/04/jack-thompson-targets-gta-iv-with-an-unlikely-ally-ign/, 2014-11-18]

Children , Country

“I hear Republicans and Libertarians and so forth talking about property rights, but they stop talking about property rights as soon as the subject of American Indians comes up, because they know fully well, perhaps not in a fully articulated, conscious form, but they know fully well that the basis for the very system of endeavor and enterprise and profitability to which they are committed and devoted accrues on the basis of theft of the resources of someone else. They are in possession of stolen property. They know it. They all know it. It's a dishonest endeavor from day one.”

Ward Churchill (1947) Political activist

in Z Magazine, vol. 8 (1995), p. 32

“Cusins: Call you poverty a crime?
Undershaft: The worst of crimes. All the other crimes are virtues beside it: all the other dishonors are chivalry itself by comparison. Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pestilences; strikes dead the very souls of all who come within sight, sound or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing: a murder here and a theft there, a blow now and a curse then: what do they matter? they are only the accidents and illnesses of life: there are not fifty genuine professional criminals in London. But there are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill fed, ill clothed people. They poison us morally and physically: they kill the happiness of society: they force us to do away with our own liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their abyss. Only fools fear crime: we all fear poverty.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

1900s, Major Barbara (1905)

Life , People , Fear , Fools

“Those societies which give their infants the greatest amount of physical affection were characterized by low theft, low infant physical pain, low religious activity, and negligible or absent killing, mutilating, or torturing of the enemy.”

James W. Prescott (1930) American psychologist

"Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence" (1975)

Pain

“In principle, should the laborers have the produce of their labor? I do not hesitate to say: No! although I know that a multitude of workers will cry out. Look, proletarians, cry out, shout as much as you like, but then listen to me: No, it is not the product of their labors to which the workers have a right. It is the satisfaction of their needs, whatever the nature of those needs. To have the possession of the product of our labor is not to have possession of that which is proper to us, it is to have property in a product made by our hands, and which could be proper to others and not to us. And isn’t all property theft?”

Joseph Déjacque (1821–1864) French writer

Le Libertaire, No. 6, September 21, 1858 ( French http://joseph.dejacque.free.fr/libertaire/n06/lib01.htm; English http://libertarian-labyrinth.blogspot.com/2011/12/joseph-dejacque-on-exchange.html)

Nature , Cry

“Man is a moral creature. The moral sense is so deeply rooted in human beings that no thief, no murderer has ever asked the abrogation of the penalties against theft and murder. All the laws that have ruled human organization in the past and rule them at present are based on the moral sense: on what is right and wrong. And no religion, no legislature has ever deemed it necessary to define right and wrong, because no one has any doubt as to the meaning of these terms. Only the worshippers of the pseudoscience of modern times regard morality and immorality, justice and injustice, good and evil, as anti-scientific concepts, since it is not possible to reproduce them in a laboratory. … The reasonings of the vivisectionists are unscientific because they don't take into account the intangible realities of life. The moral law is one such intangible reality: And it is the incomprehension of this reality that marks the inescapable failure of experimental science when applied to living beings, with its inevitable sequence of tragic errors.”

Hans Ruesch (1913–2007) Swiss racing driver

Source: Slaughter of the Innocent (1978), pp. 327-328

Life , Religion , Justice , Law

“Celtic civilization was tribal, but by no means savage or uncultivated. People who regarded the theft of a harp from a bard as a crime second only to an attack on the tribal chieftain cannot be regarded as wanting in cultivated feeling.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Scottish Folklore and Opera (1992).

People , Feeling

“One of the few benefits of the fall of civilization as we know it,” he says, “is that there are private cellars with fine vintages everywhere one digs. It is not theft. It is archaeology.”

Dan Simmons book The Rise of Endymion

Source: The Rise of Endymion (1997), Chapter 33 (p. 674)

“All these Wall Street lawyers are running the system according to Buckminster Fuller. After World War II they took most of the money out of the United States, they drained the blood out of the United States and put it abroad, overseas capital…. Fuller calls it Lawyer Capitalism, the lawyers run the show. Tax laws are the key. In the postwar years, tax law allowed US capital to go abroad…. It all fled the country and stayed abroad and America changed tremendously…. We became a world power, yet a rapacious one, with capitalists really doing a major theft of our money…. Nixon took us off the Gold standard in 1972 because America went bankrupt…. All these recessions in the 70’s, 80’s…. My father got wiped out on Wall Street.”

Oliver Stone (1946) American film director, screenwriter, and producer

Wall Street DVD Director’s Commentary (2000)

Money , War , World , Law

“But now if any one hath a mind to come over to their sect, he is not immediately admitted, but he is prescribed the same method of living which they use for a year, while he continues excluded'; and they give him also a small hatchet, and the fore-mentioned girdle, and the white garment. And when he hath given evidence, during that time, that he can observe their continence, he approaches nearer to their way of living, and is made a partaker of the waters of purification; yet is he not even now admitted to live with them; for after this demonstration of his fortitude, his temper is tried two more years; and if he appear to be worthy, they then admit him into their society. And before he is allowed to touch their common food, he is obliged to take tremendous oaths, that, in the first place, he will exercise piety towards God, and then that he will observe justice towards men, and that he will do no harm to any one, either of his own accord, or by the command of others; that he will always hate the wicked, and be assistant to the righteous; that he will ever show fidelity to all men, and especially to those in authority, because no one obtains the government without God's assistance; and that if he be in authority, he will at no time whatever abuse his authority, nor endeavor to outshine his subjects either in his garments, or any other finery; that he will be perpetually a lover of truth, and propose to himself to reprove those that tell lies; that he will keep his hands clear from theft, and his soul from unlawful gains; and that he will neither conceal anything from those of his own sect, nor discover any of their doctrines to others, no, not though anyone should compel him so to do at the hazard of his life. Moreover, he swears to communicate their doctrines to no one any otherwise than as he received them himself; that he will abstain from robbery, and will equally preserve the books belonging to their sect, and the names of the angels [or messengers]. These are the oaths by which they secure their proselytes to themselves.”

Josephus on the Essenes

Jewish War

Life , Men , God , Hate

“ISIS has become quite a self-financing terrorist network with their theft of oil, selling it on the black market with their destruction and seizure of antiquities, selling that on the black market, with their taking over Mosul and raiding the banks. They’ve got a source of funding, so I don’t really know. But I know that the — that Saudi individuals have certainly funded other related terrorist groups over time and also exported a lot of Wahhabi radicalism by kicking out or sending out imams and teachers to set up schools and mosques to preach that particularly harsh brand of Islam. So the Saudis have a lot that they can do to both stop and then to help.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech on fighting ISIS (November 20, 2015)

School , Teachers , Time , Help

“The fury of Almighty God against evil is evidence of his goodness. If he wasn’t angered, he wouldn’t be good. We cannot separate God’s goodness from his anger. Again, if God is good by nature, he must be unspeakably angry at wickedness. But his goodness is so great that his anger isn’t confined to the evils of rape and murder. Nothing is hidden from his pure and holy eyes. He is outraged by torture, terrorism, abortion, theft, lying, adultery, fornication, pedophilia, homosexuality, and blasphemy. He also sees our thought-life, and he will judge us for the hidden sins of the heart: for lust, hatred, rebellion, greed, unclean imaginations, ingratitude, selfishness, jealousy, pride, envy, deceit, etc. Jesus warned, “But I say to you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.””

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition (2009)

Life , Men , God , Jealousy

“Alas! The memories that are swallowed up in the abyss of the years! I'm all alone now and I would never be able to escape from the self-seeking of human kind anyway. Now it's theft, conceit, infatuation, and now it's rapine or seizure of one's production. But Nature is very beautiful. They can't take that away from me.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

in the last conversation Vollard had with Cezanne
Quote in a conversation in Cezanne's studio in Aix, End of 1905; as quoted in Cézanne, Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 112
Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900

Beauty , Nature , Memory

“The times are not far distant when we used to hear the cry in Communistic circles: 'Private property is a theft from the people.' Fortunately these voices are now silenced.”

Michael von Faulhaber (1869–1952) German Roman Catholic Cardinal

Sermon Three, p. 53
Sermon Three

People , Silence , Distant , Time

“We also call you to deal with us and interact with us on the basis of mutual interests and benefits, rather than the policies of sub dual, theft and occupation, and not to continue your policy of supporting the Jews because this will result in more disasters for you.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

2000s, 2002, Letter to the American people (2002)

Support

“Everyone who wishes to help bring the world out of the economic woes will line up to get a chip implanted! It's safe, simple and already available. It's been tested on animals for years. One little chip under the skin and everyone can be identified and conduct business electronically! No more theft, bad checks, waiting for checks to clear, stolen credit cards, armored cars, stolen ID, waiting lines at stores or airports, etc. Just little archways to walk through that can quickly scan who you are and automatically deduct the “cash” from your account or verify your identity! Simple! Anyone who resists this “obvious solution” will be an enemy of the state. Oh, and one more minor insignificant thing. No more privacy or independence. Big brother will be watching everything.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 140

World , Cars , Business , Waiting

“Government affairs are a bit beyond our experience,” said Jean.
“Nonsense. You’ll feel right at home. What is government but theft by consent? You’ll be moving in a society of kindred spirits.”

Scott Lynch book The Republic of Thieves

Source: The Republic of Thieves (2013), Chapter 2 “The Business” section 2 (p. 105)

Feeling , Home

“To be a socialist means to let the ego serve the neighbour, to sacrifice the self for the whole. In its deepest sense socialism equals service. The individual refrains and the commonwealth demands.
Frederick the Great was a socialist on a king's throne.
"I'm the first servant of the state." A kingly socialist saying.
Property is theft – so says the mob. Each to his own – so says the personality.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Sozialist sein: das heißt, das Ich dem Du unterordnen, die Persönlichkeit der Gesamtheit zum Opfer bringen. Sozialismus ist im tiefsten Sinne Dienst. Verzicht für den Einzelnen und Forderung für das Ganze.
Friedrich der Große war ein Sozialist auf dem Königsthron.
"Ich bin der erste Diener am Staat." Ein königliches Sozialistenwort!
Eigentum ist Diebstahl: das sagt der Pöbel. Jedem das Seine: das sagt der Charakter.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Sense , Personality

“The problem, if anything, was precisely the opposite. I had too much to write: too many fine and miserable buildings to construct and streets to name and clock towers to set chiming, too many characters to raise up from the dirt like flowers whose petals I peeled down to the intricate frail organs within, too many terrible genetic and fiduciary secrets to dig up and bury and dig up again, too many divorces to grant, heirs to disinherit, trysts to arrange, letters to misdirect into evil hands, innocent children to slay with rheumatic fever, women to leave unfulfilled and hopeless, men to drive to adultery and theft, fires to ignite at the hearts of ancient houses.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

Women , Men , Children , Secret

“Human nature is evil; its goodness derives from conscious activity. Now it is human nature to be born with a fondness for profit. Indulging this leads to contention and strife, and the sense of modesty and yielding with which one was born disappears. One is born with feelings of envy and hate, and, by indulging these, one is led into banditry and theft, so that the sense of loyalty and good faith with which he was born disappears. One is born with the desires of the ears and eyes and with a fondness for beautiful sights and sounds, and, by indulging these, one is led to licentiousness and chaos, so that the sense of ritual, rightness, refinement, and principle with which one was born is lost. Hence, following human nature and indulging human emotions will inevitably lead to contention and strife, causing one to rebel against one’s proper duty, reduce principle to chaos, and revert to violence. Therefore one must be transformed by the example of a teacher and guided by the way of ritual and rightness before one will attain modesty and yielding, accord with refinement and ritual, and return to order.”

Xun Zi (-313–-238 BC) Ancient Chinese philosopher

Sources of Chinese Tradition (1999), vol. 1, pp. 179-180
Human nature is evil

Hate , Faith , Beauty , Way

“Like such titles as Christian and Quaker, "anarchist" was in the end proudly adopted by one of those against whom it had been used in condemnation. In 1840, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, that stormy, argumentative individualist who prided himself on being a man of paradox and a provoker of contradiction, published the work that established him as a pioneer libertarian thinker. It was What Is Property?, in which he gave his own question the celebrated answer: "Property is theft." In the same book he became the first man willingly to claim the title of anarchist.
Undoubtedly Proudhon did this partly in defiance, and partly in order to exploit the word's paradoxical qualities. He had recognized the ambiguity of the Greek anarchos, and had gone back to it for that very reason — to emphasize that the criticism of authority on which he was about to embark need not necessarily imply an advocacy of disorder. The passages in which he introduces "anarchist" and "anarchy" are historically important enough to merit quotation, since they not merely show these words being used for the first time in a socially positive sense, but also contain in germ the justification by natural law which anarchists have in general applied to their arguments for a non-authoritarian society.
What is to be the form of government in the future? … I hear some of my readers reply: "Why, how can you ask such a question? You — are a republican." A republican! Yes, but that word specifies nothing. Res publico; that is, the public thing. Now, whoever is interested in public affairs — no matter under what form of government, may call himself a republican. Even kings are republicans. "Well, you are a democrat." No … "Then what are you?"”

George Woodcock (1912–1995) Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic

I am an anarchist!
Prologue
Anarchism : A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962)

Books , Law , Question , Nature

“Opulence is always the result of theft, if not committed by the actual possessor, then by his predecessor.”

Jerome (345–420) Catholic saint and Doctor of the Church

The Cry for Justice (1915), p. 397

“Maybe anything's right, he mumbled. Yes, if the world as men had made it was right, then anything else was right, any act a man took to satisfy himself, murder, theft, torture. He straightened with a start. What was happening to him? … He was going to do something, but what? Yes, he was afraid of himself, afraid of doing some nameless thing.”

Richard Wright (1908–1960) African-American writer

Eight Men (1961)

Men , World

“An insatiate lust of conquest transmutes manslaying into a virtue; and, amongst more races than one, implacable revenge has made assassination a duty. A clever theft was praiseworthy amongst the Spartans; and it is equally so amongst Christians, provided it be on a sufficiently large scale.”

Herbert Spencer book Social Statics

Pt. II, Ch. 16 : The Rights of Women
Social Statics (1851)
Context: Attila conceived himself to have a divine claim to the dominion of the earth: — the Spaniards subdued the Indians under plea of converting them to Christianity; hanging thirteen refractory ones in honour of Jesus Christ and his apostles: and we English justify our colonial aggressions by saying that the Creator intends the Anglo-Saxon race to people the world! An insatiate lust of conquest transmutes manslaying into a virtue; and, amongst more races than one, implacable revenge has made assassination a duty. A clever theft was praiseworthy amongst the Spartans; and it is equally so amongst Christians, provided it be on a sufficiently large scale. Piracy was heroism with Jason and his followers; was so also with the Norsemen; is so still with the Malays; and there is never wanting some golden fleece for a pretext. Amongst money-hunting people a man is commended in proportion to the number of hours he spends in business; in our day the rage for accumulation has apotheosized work; and even the miser is not without a code of morals by which to defend his parsimony. The ruling classes argue themselves into the belief that property should be represented rather than person — that the landed interest should preponderate. The pauper is thoroughly persuaded that he has a right to relief. The monks held printing to be an invention of the devil; and some of our modern sectaries regard their refractory brethren as under demoniacal possession. To the clergy nothing is more obvious than that a state-church is just, and essential to the maintenance of religion. The sinecurist thinks himself rightly indignant at any disregard of his vested interests. And so on throughout society.

Revenge

“They frame this as a massive battle to stop theft, to protect property. … They extend copyrights perpetually. They don't get how that in itself is a form of theft. A theft of our common culture.”

Lawrence Lessig (1961) American academic, political activist.

OSCON 2002
Context: J. C. Watts is the only black member of the Republican Party in leadership. He's going to resign from Congress. He's been there seven and a half years. He's had enough. Nobody can believe it. Nobody in Washington can believe it.... In an interview two days ago, Watts said, Here's the problem with Washington: "If you are explaining, you are losing." If you are explaining, you're losing. It's a bumper sticker culture. People have to get it like that, and if they don't, if it takes three seconds to make them understand, you're off their radar screen. Three seconds to understand, or you lose. This is our problem. Six years after this battle began, we're still explaining. We're still explaining and we are losing. They frame this as a massive battle to stop theft, to protect property.... They extend copyrights perpetually. They don't get how that in itself is a form of theft. A theft of our common culture. We have failed in getting them to see what the issues here are and that's why we live in this place where a tradition speaks of freedom and their controls take it away.

“Three-fifths to two-thirds of the federal budget consists of taking property from one American and giving it to another. Were a private person to do the same thing, we'd call it theft.”

Walter E. Williams (1936) American economist, commentator, and academic

When government does it, we euphemistically call it income redistribution, but that's exactly what thieves do -- redistribute income. Income redistribution not only betrays the founders' vision, it's a sin in the eyes of God.
On Bogus Right http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/articles/06/bogus.html (8 February 2006)
2000s

Personality

“Hours and hours of insanity and escape. The projects were a victim of theft and wind. The downdrafts made their own weather.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book One: All Respects to Heaven, I Like it Here
Context: Hours and hours of insanity and escape. The projects were a victim of theft and wind. The downdrafts made their own weather. Plastic bags caught on the gusts of summer wind. Old domino players sat in the courtyard, playing underneath the flying litter. The sound of the plastic bags was like rifle fire. If you watched the rubbish for a while you could tell the exact shape of the wind. Perhaps in a way it was alluring, like little else around it: whole, bright, slapping curlicues and large figure eights, helixes and whorls and corkscrews. Sometimes a bit of plastic caught against a pipe or touched the top of the chain-link fence and backed away gracelessly, like it had been warned. The handles came together and the bag collapsed. There were no tree branches to be caught on. One boy from a neighboring flat stuck a lineless fishing pole out the window but he didn't catch any. The bags often stayed up in one place, as if they were contemplating the whole gray scene, and then would take a sudden dip, a polite curtsy, and away.

Weather

“Copying is not theft
Stealing a thing leaves one less left
Copying it makes one thing more
That's what copying's for.”

Nina Paley (1968) US animator, cartoonist and free culture activist

"Copying Is Not Theft - let the re-recording begin! (15 December 2009) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djVaJN0f0VQ ; also quoted in "Calling All Musicians: Can You Arrange This Song?" at QuestionCopyright.org http://questioncopyright.org/copying_isnt_theft · "We Are Creators Too: Nina Paley " (2009) — introduced by Paley singing a variant of the first stanza of her song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uN7upUXSFk · "Copying Is Not Theft - Official Version" (1 April 2010) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4
Context: Copying is not theft
Stealing a thing leaves one less left
Copying it makes one thing more
That's what copying's for.
Copying isn't theft
If I copy yours, you have it too
One for me and one for you
That's what copies can do.
If I steal your bicycle,
You have to take the bus
But if I just copy it,
There's one for each of us!
Making more of a thing
That is what we call copying
Sharing ideas with everyone
That's why copying...
... Is fun!

“The whole idea, the whole premise of taxation needs to be examined. It's based on theft.”

Glenn Jacobs (1967) American professional wrestler and actor

19:20–19:25.
"WWE Wrestler Kane Talks Libertarianism, and His Heroes" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpqUIwu8nuc (2013)

Idea

“The reason why I entered into a religious order is this: first, the great misery of the world, the wickedness of men, the rapes, the adulteries, the thefts, the pride, the idolatry, the vile curses, for the world has come to such a state that one can no longer find anyone who does good”

Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498) Italian Dominican friar and preacher

Letter to his father (25 April 1475), as quoted in A Guide to Righteous Living and Other Works (2003) as translated by Konrad Eisenbichler, p. 17 http://books.google.com/books?id=5GLhEQiogQ8C&pg=PA17&dq=%22wickedness+of+men,+the+rapes,+the+adulteries,+the+thefts,+the+pride,+the+idolatry%22&lr=&cd=1#v=onepage&q=%22wickedness%20of%20men%2C%20the%20rapes%2C%20the%20adulteries%2C%20the%20thefts%2C%20the%20pride%2C%20the%20idolatry%22&f=false
Context: The reason why I entered into a religious order is this: first, the great misery of the world, the wickedness of men, the rapes, the adulteries, the thefts, the pride, the idolatry, the vile curses, for the world has come to such a state that one can no longer find anyone who does good; so much so that many times every day I would sing this verse with tears in my eyes: Alas, flee from cruel lands, flee from the shores of the greedy. I did this because I could not stand the great wickedness of the blind people of Italy, especially when I saw that virtue had been completely cast down and vice raised up.

Men , World

“I don’t know if you could prove that every theft is wrong; but I can prove to you that every theft is against the law, because I can arrest you every time.”

Karel Čapek (1890–1938) Czech writer

Sgt. Bartosek, in "Šlépeje" ["Footprints"] (1929) as translated by Norma Comrada, in Toward the Radical Center: A Karel Čapek Reader (1990), edited by Peter Kussi, p. 236
Context: Look, justice has to be as unquestioned as the multiplication tables. I don’t know if you could prove that every theft is wrong; but I can prove to you that every theft is against the law, because I can arrest you every time. If you scattered pearls in the street, then a policeman could give you a ticket for littering. But if you started performing miracles, we couldn’t stop you, unless we called it a public nuisance or unlawful public assembly. There must be some kind of breach of order for us to intervene.

Law , Time

“Because it has Societies for the prevention of physical cruelty to animals,and none with the object of preventing the moral cruelty practiced on human beings. Because it encourages, legally and tacitly, vice under every form, from the sale of whiskey down to forced prostitution and theft brought on by starvation wages...”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book The Key to Theosophy

The Key to Theosophy (1889)

Animals