Dispossession Quotes

Impoverish the white middle class. Homeownership is racist/failed public policy.

They (Native Americans) didn't have any rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using. What was it that they were fighting for, when they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their 'right' to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, but just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or a few caves above it. Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right to take over this continent.

They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never kept but one; they promised to take our land, and they took it.

We brought disaster upon... Arab refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave... We have rendered them dispossessed... We have accustomed them to begging... We have participated in lowering their moral and social level... Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson, and throwing bombs upon... men, women and children - all this in service of political purposes...

I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.

The settler and pioneer have at bottom had justice on their side; this great continent could not have been kept as nothing but a game preserve for squalid savages.

Roll back the clock, and every possession of every great country started with a crime.

Capitalism will never fall on its own. It will have to be pushed. The accumulation of capital will never cease. It will have to be stopped. The capitalist class will never willingly surrender its power. It will have to be dispossessed.

Possession isn't nine-tenths of the law. It's nine-tenths of the problem.

I know how it feels to sit on the sideline and watch a spot that is supposed to be yours taken.

Western concepts of ownership and privatization came in and clashed with that. So land began to be exchanged.

When I was a boy, the Sioux owned the world. The sun rose and set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them?

…the native races, whose land it was long before we came here

There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle afer cycle, by force and bloodshed.

In England, the population explosion can be linked very clearly with the enclosure of the commons that uprooted the peasants from their land. In India, it was the same thing: the population increased at the end of the 18th century when the British took over and Indian lands were colonized. Instead of the land feeding Indian people it started to feed the British empire. So we had destitution. Destitute people who don't have their own land to feed themselves can only feed themselves by having larger numbers, therefore they multiply. It's the rational response of a dispossessed people.

The end proposed should be their extermination, or their removal beyond the [Great] Lakes.

Where there's property, there's theft.

They took all our land; I don't have any land to toil. My crops have to grow somewhere else.

The word 'Zionist' has become toxic. To some it means believing in Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. To others it represents a movement that led to the expulsion and marginalisation of the Palestinian people in their own land.

The Cherokees tried to do everything within the law and wished only to live in peace on their own lands. Yet they were cheated out of their birthright and treated as if they were less than human.

History is for all of us to discuss. All history is our common heritage to discuss and analyze. The founding of the state of Israel, for example, based on ethnic cleansing is there for us all to discuss.

I have written about the dispossessed, immigrants, the condition of women who do not enjoy the same legal rights as men, the Palestinians who are deprived of their land and condemned to exile.

And we could have all this,' she said. 'And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible.' 'What did you say?' 'I said we could have everything.' 'We can have everything.' 'No, we can't.' 'We can have the whole world.' 'No, we can't.' 'We can go everywhere.' 'No, we can't. It isn't ours anymore.' 'It's ours.' 'No, it isn't. And once they take it away, you never get it back.

The English have come…. They have built a fort. They eat my land, and yet they have given me nothing at all. They have made me sign a treaty. They curtail my power and I get nothing at all from them in return.

We obtain things when we no longer want them.