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History, like love, is so apt to surround her heroes with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness.

James F. Cooper

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James F. Cooper
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More quotes by James F. Cooper

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The sight of a coward's blood can never make a warrior tremble.
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The disposition of all power is to abuses, nor does it at all mend the matter that its possessors are a majority. Unrestrained political authority, though it be confided to masses, cannot be trusted without positive limitations, men in bodies being but an aggregation of the passions, weaknesses and interests of men as individuals.
James F. Cooper
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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
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Death is appalling to those of the most iron nerves, when it comes quietly and in the stillness and solitude of night.
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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
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The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity, since the tastes, knowledge, and principles of the majority form the tribunal of appeal.
James F. Cooper
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The minority of a country is never known to agree, except in its efforts to reduce and oppress the majority.
James F. Cooper
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How easy it is for generous sentiments, high courtesy, and chivalrous courage to lose their influence beneath the chilling blight of selfishness, and to exhibit to the world a man who was great in all the minor attributes of character, but who was found wanting when it became necessary to prove how much principle is superior to policy.
James F. Cooper
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In America, it is indispensable that every well wisher of true liberty should understand that acts of tyranny can only proceed from the publick. The publick, then, is to be watched, in this country, as, in other countries kings and aristocrats are to be watched.
James F. Cooper
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Contact with the affairs of state is one of the most corrupting of the influences to which men are exposed.
James F. Cooper
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If we would have civilization and the exertion indispensable to its success, we must have property if we have property, we must have its rights if we have the rights of property, we must take those consequences of the rights of property which are inseparable from the rights themselves.
James F. Cooper
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God planted the seeds of all the trees, continued Hetty, after a moment's pause, and you see to what a height and shade they have grown! So it is with the Bible. You may read a verse this year, and forget it, and it will come back to you a year hence, when you least expect to remember it.
James F. Cooper
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Principles . . . become modified in practice, by facts.
James F. Cooper
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All greatness of character is dependent on individuality.
James F. Cooper
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There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore.
James F. Cooper
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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
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If the newspapers are useful in overthrowing tyrants, it is only to establish a tyranny of their own.
James F. Cooper
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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
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Near the centre of that State of New York lies an extensive district of country, whose surface is a succession of hills and dales, or, to speak with greater deference to geographical definitions, of mountains and valleys.
James F. Cooper
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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