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
tis hard to live in a world where all look upon you as below them.
James F. Cooper
Image
Equality, in a social sense, may be divided into that of condition and that of rights. Equality of condition is incompatible with civilization, and is found only to exist in those communities that are but slightly removed from the savage state. In practice, it can only mean a common misery.
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
New York is essentially national in interest, position, pursuits. No one thinks of the place as belonging to a particular state, but to the United States.
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
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore.
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
The novice in the military art flew from point to point, retarding his own preparations by the excess of his violent and somewhat distempered zeal while the more practiced veteran made his arrangements with a deliberation that scorned every appearance of haste
James F. Cooper
Image
Systems are to be appreciated by their general effects, and not by particular exceptions.
James F. Cooper
Image
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
Image
We are all human, and all do wrong.
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 expanse of the ocean is seldom seen by the novice with indifference.
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
All greatness of character is dependent on individuality.
James F. Cooper
Image
A soul,--a spark of the never-dying flame that separates man from all the other beings of earth.
James F. Cooper
Image
History, like love, is so apt to surround her heroes with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness.
James F. Cooper
Image
An interesting fiction... however paradoxical the assertion may appear... addresses our love of truth- not the mere love of facts expressed by true names and dates, but the love of that higher truth, the truth of nature and principals, which is a primitive law of the human mind.
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
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