James Fenimore Cooper Quotes

• 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 Fenimore 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.

  James Fenimore Cooper

• They who have reasoned ignorantly, or who have aimed at effecting their personal ends by flattering the popular feeling, have boldly affirmed that ‘one man is as good as another;’ a maxim that is true in neither nature, revealed morals, nor political theory.

  James Fenimore Cooper

• The very existence of government at all, infers inequality. The citizen who is preferred to office becomes the superior to those who are not, so long as he is the repository of power, and the child inherits the wealth of the parent as a controlling law of society.

  James Fenimore Cooper

• The disposition of all power is to abuses, nor does it at all mend the matter that its possessors are a majority.

  James Fenimore Cooper

• The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms.

  James Fenimore Cooper

• Systems are to be appreciated by their general effects, and not by particular exceptions.

  James Fenimore Cooper

• Slavery is no more sinful, by the Christian code, than it is sinful to wear a whole coat, while another is in tatters, to eat a better meal than a neighbor, or otherwise to enjoy ease and plenty, while our fellow creatures are suffering and in want.

  James Fenimore Cooper

• Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party.

  James Fenimore Cooper

• No civilized society can long exist, with an active power in its bosom that is stronger than the law.

  James Fenimore Cooper

• 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 Fenimore Cooper

• It is a governing principle of nature, that the agency which can produce most good, when perverted from its proper aim, is most productive of evil.

  James Fenimore Cooper

• 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 Fenimore Cooper

• America owes most of its social prejudices to the exaggerated religious opinions of the different sects which were so instrumental in establishing the colonies.

  James Fenimore Cooper

• 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 Fenimore Cooper

• All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity.

  James Fenimore Cooper

• A monarchy is the most expensive of all forms of government, the regal state requiring a costly parade, and he who depends on his own power to rule, must strengthen that power by bribing the active and enterprising whom he cannot intimidate.

  James Fenimore Cooper

• The minority of a country is never known to agree, except in its efforts to reduce and oppress the majority.

  James Fenimore 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 Fenimore Cooper

• A refined simplicity is the characteristic of all high bred deportment, in every country.

  James Fenimore Cooper

James Fenimore Cooper (28)

Birth:	15th September, 1789
Death:	14th September, 1851
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Novelist

About

James Fenimore Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey, USA. He was an American novelist of the early 19th century. He studied at Yale University. Before embarking on his career as a writer, he served in the U.S. Navy as a midshipman, which greatly influenced many of his novels and other writings. He wrote several novels include: Precaution, The Spy, The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea, Lionel Lincoln, The Prairie, The Red Rover, The Pathfinder, The Deerslayer, The Chainbearer, The Redskins, The Sea Lions, and The Ways of the Hour.

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