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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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James F. Cooper
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More quotes by James F. Cooper

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The listeners got some such insights into their past lives, as one gets into the darker parts of the woods, when a stray gleam of sunshine finds its way down to the roots of the trees.
James F. Cooper
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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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Everybody says it, and what everybody says must be true.
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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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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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
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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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Hope is the most treacherous of all human fancies.
James F. Cooper
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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
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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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I've heard it said that there are men who read in books to convince themselves there is a God. I know not but man may so deform his works in the settlements, as to leave that which is so clear in the wilderness a matter of doubt among traders and priests.
James F. Cooper
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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
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Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party.
James F. Cooper
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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
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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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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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The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms.
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
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The ability to discriminate between that which is true and that which is false is one of the last attainments of the human mind.
James F. Cooper
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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