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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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James F. Cooper
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More quotes by 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.
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Systems are to be appreciated by their general effects, and not by particular exceptions.
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Should we distrust the man because his manners are not our manners, and that his skin is dark?
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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.
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Superstition is a quality that seems indigenous to the ocean.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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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
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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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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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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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Perfection is always found in maturity, whether it be in the animal or in the intellectual world. Reflection is the mother of wisdom, and wisdom the parent of success.
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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The Americans... are almost ignorant of the art of music, one of the most elevating, innocent and refining of human tastes, whose influence on the habits and morals of a people is of the most beneficial tendency.
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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It's wisest always to be so clad that our friends need not ask us for our names.
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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If the newspapers are useful in overthrowing tyrants, it is only to establish a tyranny of their own.
James F. Cooper