Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Private property rights are not absolute and can be regulated by the community for the public good.
In plain terms
You own property but the community can limit how you use it for the public good.
What can you take from it?
Property rights are balanced by public welfare needs.

Where it applies

  • zoning laws
  • environmental protection
  • urban planning

Putting it to work

  • understand zoning rules
  • balance private and public interests

Questions to consider

  • Where should regulation end?
  • How do you balance rights?

Another view

Excessive regulation can infringe on individual liberty and property value.

More from Theodore Roosevelt

  1. It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs …

    Permalink to quote #20
  2. The object of government is the welfare of the people. The material progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so far as they lead to the moral …

    Permalink to quote #22
  3. To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in t…

    Permalink to quote #19

Related quotes

  1. [S]ome kinds of government regulation of private consensual homosexual behavior may face substantial constitutional challenge.

    Anthony KennedyAnthony Kennedy quote #1
  2. We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is, and the judiciary is the safeguard of our liberty and of our property under the…

    Charles Evans HughesCharles Evans Hughes quote #1
  3. People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contr…

    Adam SmithAdam Smith quote #4