Tommaso Campanella

When we raise a son to riches and dignities, and leave an heir to much wealth, we become either ready to grasp at the property of the State—if in any case fear should be removed from the power which belongs to riches and rank—or avaricious, crafty, and hypocritical, if one is of slender purse, little strength, and mean ancestry. But when we have taken away self-love original: "philautia," a Greek term for excessive self-love or egoism, there remains only love for the State.

G.M. The Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller, acting as the interviewer Under such circumstances no one will be willing to labor, while he expects others to work, on the fruit of whose labors he can live, as Aristotle argues against Plato A reference to Aristotle's "Politics," where he critiques Plato's "Republic" by arguing that communal property leads to neglect, as people care most for what is their own.

Capt. The Genoese Sea Captain who has returned from the City of the Sun I do not know how to deal with that argument The Captain admits he is not a philosopher, but an observer, but I declare to you that they burn with so great a love for their fatherland, as I could scarcely have believed possible; and indeed with much more than the histories tell us belonged to the Romans, who fell willingly for their country, inasmuch as they have to a greater extent surrendered their private property. I think truly that the friars and monks and clergy of our country, if they were not weakened by love for their kindred and friends or by the ambition to rise to higher dignities, would be less fond of property, and more imbued with a spirit of charity toward all, as it was in the time of the apostles, and is now in a great many cases.