James F. Cooper Quotes
It is a misfortune that necessity has induced men to accord greater license to this formidable engine, in order to obtain liberty, than can be borne with less important objects in view; for the press, like fire, is an excellent servant, but a terrible master.
James F. Cooper
Quotes to Explore
No civilized society can long exist, with an active power in its bosom that is stronger than the law.
James F. Cooper
All that a good government aims at... is to add no unnecessary and artificial aid to the force of its own unavoidable consequences, and to abstain from fortifying and accumulating social inequality as a means of increasing political inequalities.
James F. Cooper
A monarchy is the most expensive of all forms of government, the regal state requiring a costly parade, and he who depends on his own power to rule, must strengthen that power by bribing the active and enterprising whom he cannot intimidate.
James F. Cooper
Slavery is no more sinful, by the Christian code, than it is sinful to wear a whole coat, while another is in tatters, to eat a better meal than a neighbor, or otherwise to enjoy ease and plenty, while our fellow creatures are suffering and in want.
James F. Cooper
It is a governing principle of nature, that the agency which can produce most good, when perverted from its proper aim, is most productive of evil.
James F. Cooper
The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.
James F. Cooper
They who have reasoned ignorantly, or who have aimed at effecting their personal ends by flattering the popular feeling, have boldly affirmed that 'one man is as good as another;' a maxim that is true in neither nature, revealed morals, nor political theory.
James F. Cooper
The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms.
James F. Cooper
Candor is a proof of both a just frame of mind, and of a good tone of breeding. It is a quality that belongs equally to the honest man and to the gentleman.
James F. Cooper
It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.
James F. Cooper
Ignorance and superstition ever bear a close and mathematical relation to each other.
James F. Cooper
The affairs of life embrace a multitude of interests, and he who reasons in any one of them, without consulting the rest, is a visionary unsuited to control the business of the world.
James F. Cooper