Ownership Illusion Quotes

You see, after all, few rich men own their property. The property owns them.

Drive-in banks were established so most of the cars today could see their real owners.

As a lower-class kid, I was raised to think success would be owning stuff. Having that great job, too. Now I find my parents' dream was wrong. You never really own anything. And you're never really finished as a person.

Man wants to own his existence. But no one owns time.

Who owns Cross Creek? The red-birds, I think, more than I, for they will have their nests even in the face of delinquent mortgages..It seems to me that the earth may be borrowed, but not bought. It may be used, but not owned. It gives itself in response to love and tending, offers its sesonal flowering and fruiting. But we are tenants and not possessors, lovers, and not masters. Cross Creek belongs to the wind and the rain, to the sun and the seasons, to the cosmic secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time..."

God laughs on two occasions. He laughs when the physician says to the patient's mother, 'Don't be afraid, mother; I shall certainly cure your boy.' God laughs, saying to Himself, 'I am going to take his life, and this man says he will save it!' The physician thinks he is the master, forgetting that God is the Master. God laughs again when two brothers divide their land with a string, saying to each other, 'This side is mine and that side is yours.' He laughs and says to Himself, 'The whole universe belongs to Me, but they say they own this portion or that portion.'

The way I think we were living is an invention. The truth is nobody can own anything. That was an unheard-of concept among indigenous people. We invented that.

People think they own time. They have watches and clocks and digital pulses. But they are wrong. Time owns them.

On an average day, we allow ourselves the fiction that we own a piece of our workplace. That's part of what it takes to get the job done. Deeper down, we know it's all on loan.