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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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James F. Cooper
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Whenever the government of the United States shall break up, it will probably be in consequence of a false direction having been given to public opinion.
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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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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.
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History, like love, is so apt to surround her heroes with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness.
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Hebrews . This book is much superior to most of the writings attributed to St. Paul, though passages in the other books are very admirable.
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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.
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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.
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The minority of a country is never known to agree, except in its efforts to reduce and oppress the majority.
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Hope is the most treacherous of all human fancies.
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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
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It is the fate of all things to ripen, and then to decay.
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Everybody says it, and what everybody says must be true.
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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.
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The sight of a coward's blood can never make a warrior tremble.
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Superstition is a quality that seems indigenous to the ocean.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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