Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

James F. Cooper
Principles
Tastes
Democracy
Mediocrity
Since
Appeal
Knowledge
Tendency
Freedom
Appeals
Form
Tendencies
Tribunal
Things
Majority
Tribunals
Taste
Democracies

More quotes by James F. Cooper

Image
If the newspapers are useful in overthrowing tyrants, it is only to establish a tyranny of their own.
James F. Cooper
Image
A single glance at the map will make the reader acquainted with the position of the eastern coast of the island of Great Britain, as connected with the shores of the opposite continent.
James F. Cooper
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Christ, in the parable of the vine dressers, has taught us a sublime lesson of justice, by showing that to the things which are not our own, we can have no just claim.
James F. Cooper
Image
The disposition of all power is to abuses, nor does it at all mend the matter that its possessors are a majority.
James F. Cooper
Image
The sight of a coward's blood can never make a warrior tremble.
James F. Cooper
Image
A refined simplicity is the characteristic of all high bred deportment, in every country, and a considerate humanity should be the aim of all beneath it.
James F. Cooper
Image
There is a destiny in war, to which a brave man knows how to submit with the same courage that he faces his foes.
James F. Cooper
Image
Individuality is the aim of political liberty.
James F. Cooper
Image
Everybody says it, and what everybody says must be true.
James F. Cooper
Image
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
Image
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
Image
We live in a world of transgressions and selfishness, and no pictures that represent us otherwise can be true though happily for human nature, gleamings of that pure spirit in whose likeness man has been fashioned, are to be seen, relieving its deformities, and mitigating, if not excusing its crimes.
James F. Cooper
Image
Principles . . . become modified in practice, by facts.
James F. Cooper
Image
Where are your combing seas, your blue water, your rollers, your breakers, your whales, or your waterspouts, and your endless motion, in this bit of a forest, child?
James F. Cooper
Image
I can't see no great difference atween givin' up territory afore a war, out of a dread of war, and givin' it up after a war, because we can't help it-unless it be that the last is the most manful and honourable.
James F. Cooper
Image
tis hard to live in a world where all look upon you as below them.
James F. Cooper
Image
It is seldom men think of death in the pride of their health and strength.
James F. Cooper
Image
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore.
James F. Cooper