The Commons Quotes

Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons.

What belongs to everybody belongs to nobody.

You grow great crops in great soil. And the soil is the commons. Increasingly, we have monopolistic companies that try to take as much as they can for themselves. And we have a patent and copyright regime that makes sure that nothing goes back into the commons unless by an extraordinary act of generosity. This is not fertile soil for innovation.

England is not a Free People, till the Poor that have no Land, have a free allowance to dig and labour the Commons, and so live as Comfortably as the Landlords that live in their Inclosures. For the People have not laid out their Monies, and shed their Bloud, that their Landlords, the Norman power, should still have its liberty and freedom to rule in Tyranny …

Earlier pluralist societies destroyed themselves because no one took care of the common good. They abounded in communities but could not sustain community, let alone create it.

Jim Sheridan, the MP who wants to ban sketchwriters from the Commons for being rude about politicians, is a blithering idiot. Sorry, scrub that - clearly a very thoughtful person with whom I might conceivably disagree on some marginal issues. A blithering savant, perhaps.

Universities are some of the few places left where a struggle for the commons, for public life, if not democracy itself, can be made visible through the medium of collective voices and social movements energized by the need for a politics and way of life counter to authoritarian capitalism.

Protecting Americans from harm goes beyond police and national defense. It's imperative that we not destroy the commons, the physical environment on which we rely.

The honest truth is that if this government were to propose the massacre of the first-born, it would still have no difficulty in getting it through the Commons.

Magna Carta only came into being in 1217, when the wording had been changed and parts of the original were extended in the Charter of the Forests. This complementary charter covered liberties granted to the common man, including rights to the commons, grazing, fishing, water, and firewood, and was perhaps the first ecological charter in history.

The manner of their government is much after the Turkish fashion: which they seem to imitate. The state and form of their government is plain tyrannical, as applying all to the behoof of the prince, and that after a after a most open and barbarous manner.... It giveth the nobility a kind of unjust and unmeasured liberty to command and exact upon the commons and baser sort of people in all parts of the realm...

The rise of capitalist practice and morality brought with it a radical revision of how the commons are treated, and also of how they are conceived.

Very great riches in private men are always dangerous to states, because they create greater dependence than can be consistent with the security of any sort of government whatsoever; they place subjects upon too near a level with their sovereigns; make the nobility stand upon too great an inequality in respect of one another; destroy amongst the Commons, that balance of property and power, which is necessary to democracy, or the democratic part of any government, overthrow the poise of it, and indeed alter its nature, though not its name.

Public crowdfunding still suffers from a tragedy of the commons problem. Everyone will want the benefit of the crowdfunded efforts but is incentivized to sit on the sidelines and hope others chip in.

Using the commons as a cesspool does not harm the general public under frontier conditions, because there is no public, the same behavior in a metropolis is unbearable.

Watching the Commons tribute to Margaret Thatcher was like being suffocated inside a gigantic sticky toffee pudding, but one with nasty bogeys planted inside. There was much of the 'Margaret Thatcher who was lucky enough to know me,' especially from her own side of the House.

If I am doing a speech at a Labour party meeting - I think I have done every constituency - I'll look for a happy face, and talk to that face. In the Commons, with all the anger, I'll fix on a blank panel above their heads.

Think of a public library, worth more for those who cannot afford numerous books. Think of a public waterway or fishing ground. All types of commons have imputed monetary value that together comprise a source of social income. As such, the commons reduces economic inequality and insecurity in society.

Why consider debates in the English House of Commons in 1628 along with documents on American developments in the late eighteenth century? The juxtaposition is not capricious, because the Commons during this period generated many of the ideas that were later embodied in the government of the United States.

The rational man finds that his share of the cost of the wastes he discharges into the commons is less than the cost of purifying his wastes before releasing them.

They say that the commons of England would first destroy the king's friends and afterward himself, and then bring the Duke of York to be king so that by their false means and lies they may make him to hate and destroy his friends, and cherish his false traitors.

Show me a first-generatio n fortune and I'll show you a successful partnership between a talented individual and society's invisible venture capitalist, the commons.

I was in the Commons recently and saw a young lady wearing a nice pair of shoes. I said I liked them and she said my shoes were the reason she became involved in politics.

It is quite wrong for party conferences to be used as an excuse for the Commons not to sit. Conferences could be held at weekends.

A rich and diverse commons lowers the cost of living for those who use it. And throughout history, it has been those on low incomes who gain most from the commons.