42 Land Quotes

I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own.

It is a comfortable feeling to know that you stand on your own ground. Land is about the only thing that can't fly away.

Such security is equal liberty. But it is not necessarily equality in the use of the earth.

We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it - for a little while.

There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.

Twisting through the thorn-thick underbrush, scratched and exhausted, one turns suddenly to find an unexpected waterfall, not half a mile from the nearest road, a spot so hard to reach that no one comes - a hiding place, a shrine for dragonflies and nesting jays, a sign that there is still one piece of property that won't be owned.

Men did not make the earth... It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property... Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds.

The natives are very exact and punctual in the bounds of their lands, belonging to this or that prince or people, even to a river, brook, &c. And I have known them make bargain and sale amongst themselves for a small piece or quantity of ground ; notwithstanding a sinful opinion amongst many, that christians have right to heathen's land.

Here in Florida ... we have something special we never enjoyed at Disneyland - the blessing of size. There's enough land here to hold all the ideas and plans we can possibly imagine.

If I should ever by chance grow rich I'll buy Codham, Cockridden, and Childerditch, Roses, Pyrgo, and Lapwater, And let them all to my eldest daughter.

'Entre todas las tierras del mundo Espanna a una estremanca de abondamiento et de bondad mas que otra tierra ninguna. [...] ?Ay Espanna! non a lengua ni engenno que pueda contar tu bien [...]'

To secure ourselves in this use, each contracts, or will ultimately contract, with his fellows not to encroach upon those portions of the earth which they are actually using, in return for their agreement not to encroach upon that portion of the earth which he is actually using.

If Uncle Sam should ever sell that tract for one cent per acre, he will swindle the purchaser outrageously.

I am the horizon you ride towards, the thing you can never lasso I am also what surrounds you: my brain scattered with your tincans, bones, empty shells, the litter of your invasions. I am the space you desecrate as you pass through.

When they laid down their arms, we murdered them. We lied to them. We cheated them out of their lands. We starved them into signing fraudulent agreements that we called treaties which we never kept. We turned them into beggars on a continent that gave life for as long as life can remember. And by any interpretation of history, however twisted, we did not do right. We were not lawful nor were we just in what we did. For them, we do not have to restore these people, we do not have to live up to some agreements, because it is given to us by virtue of our power to attack the rights of others, to take their property, to take their lives when they are trying to defend their land and liberty, and to make their virtues a crime and our own vices virtues.

Dayan didn't want the government to allow the kibbutzim to build there afterwards - he hoped to trade it back for peace.

The English... justified their grabbing of Indian land by claiming that these simple folk did not really believe in property rights. On the contrary, Williams observed, 'the Natives are very exact and punctual in the bounds of their Lands, belonging to this or that Prince or People,' even bargaining among themselves for a small piece of ground.

The great inviolate place had an ancient permanence which the sea cannot claim. Who can say of a particular sea that it is old? Distilled by the sun, kneaded by the moon, it is renewed in a year, in a day, or in an hour. The sea changed, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people changed, yet Egdon remained.

Karabakh, as a landmass, what kind of benefit can it give to us...? All the world's most powerful governments pay millions of dollars for seas and deserts, 100's of acres of land bought for ownership, and improvement done for later benefit. Because it's land that is forever stable, money is just paper.

Written in red their protest stands, For the Gods of the World to see; On the dooming wall their bodiless hands have blazoned 'Upharsin,' and flaring brands Illumine the message: 'Seize the lands! Open the prisons and make men free!' Flame out the living words of the dead Written-in-red.

Physical America - the land itself - should be as dear to us all as our political heritage and our treasured way of life. Its preservation and the wise conservation of its renewable resources concerns every man, woman and child whose possession it is.

To people off alone, as we were, there is something stirring about finding evidences of human labour and care in the soil of an empty country. It comes to you as a sort of message, makes you feel differently about the ground you walk over every day.

Father Latour judged that, just as it was the white man's way to assert himself in any landscape, to change it, make it over a little (at least to leave some mark of memorial of his sojourn), it was the Indian's way to pass through a country without disturbing anything; to pass and leave no trace, like fish through the water, or birds through the air. It was the Indian manner to vanish into the landscape, not to stand out against it. The Hopi villages that were set upon rock mesas were made to look like the rock on which they sat, were imperceptible at a distance.

Indigenous rights are those, which relate to indigenous people, their way of life, their land and their resources. They are connected in nature and the birthrights of indigenous people.

'A priest warned me that we must keep a careful and guarded watch over fellow Indo-Fijians because they are like weeds. They tend to push to grab and take over the land and the nation. (Era dau sugusugu vanua). I really appreciated the meaning of the words 'sugusugu vanua' because this is what we, the indigenous people (i.e. taukei) have proven and believe is the design of the foreigners (vulagi)'.

Saw pardelas and a green rush near the vessel. The crew of the Pinta saw a cane and a log; they also picked up a stick which appeared to have been carved with an iron tool, a piece of cane, a plant which grows on land, and a board. The crew of the Nina saw other signs of land, and a stalk loaded with rose berries. These signs encouraged them, and they all grew cheerful.

I must say as to what I have seen of Texas, it is the garden spot of the world. The best land & best prospects for health I ever saw is here, and I do believe it is a fortune to any man to come here. There is a world of country to settle.

Now if I lived in my land, which I do, if I lived in Iceland, if I lived in Greensland I'd still have Chinese children, but out of my ears my little grey baby hears.

They are continually talking about your patriotic duty. It is not their but your patriotic duty that they are concerned about. There is a decided difference. Their patriotic duty never takes them to the firing line or chucks them into the trenches. And now among other things they are urging you to 'cultivate' war gardens, while at the same time a government war report just issued shows that practically 52 percent of the arable, tillable soil is held out of use by the landlords, speculators and profiteers. They themselves do not cultivate the soil. Nor do they allow others to cultivate it. They keep it idle to enrich themselves, to pocket the millions of dollars of unearned increment.

The land was ours before we were the land's. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people.

Such as we were we gave ourselves outright (The deed of gift was many deeds of war) To the land vaguely realizing westward, But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced, Such as she was, such as she would become.

Take of English earth as much As either hand may rightly clutch. In the taking of it breathe Prayer for all who lie beneath.

My fatherland has always the first claim on me.

If Germany, my beloved fatherland, of whom you know I am proud, will not accept me, then must I, in the name of God, again make France or England richer by one capable German; - and to the shame of the German nation.