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Liberty is not a matter of words, but a positive and important condition of society. Its greatest safeguard after placing its foundations on a popular base, is in the checks and balances imposed on the public servants.

James F. Cooper

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James F. Cooper
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More quotes by 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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Individuality is the aim of political liberty. By leaving to the citizen as much freedom of action and of being as comports with order and the rights of others, the institutions render him truly a freeman. He is left to pursue his means of happiness in his own manner.
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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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
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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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As reason and revelation both tell us that this state of being is but a preparation for another of a still higher and more spiritual order, all the interests of life are of comparatively little importance, when put in the balance against the future.
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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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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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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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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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
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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 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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Death is appalling to those of the most iron nerves, when it comes quietly and in the stillness and solitude of night.
James F. Cooper
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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
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tis hard to live in a world where all look upon you as below them.
James F. Cooper
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Battles, unlike bargains, are rarely discussed in society.
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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Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party.
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