James F. Cooper Quotes & Sayings

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

The demagogue is usually sly, a detractor of others, a professor of humility and disinterestedness, a great stickler for equality as respects all above him, a man who acts in corners, and avoids open and manly expositions of his course, calls blackguards gentlemen, and gentlemen folks, appeals to passions and prejudices rather than to reason, and is in all respects, a man of intrigue and deception, of sly cunning and management. — James F. Cooper

What will the axemen do, when they have cut their way from sea to sea? — James F. Cooper

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

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

The flesh is sweeter, where the creature has some chance for its life; for that reason, I always use a single ball, even if it be at a bird or a squirrel; besides, it saves lead, for, when a body knows how to shoot, one piece of lead is enough for all, except hard-lived animals. — James F. Cooper

Commerce is entitled to a complete and efficient protection in all its legal rights, but the moment it presumes to control a country, or to substitute its fluctuating expedients for the high principles of natural justice that ought to lie at the root of every political system, it should be frowned on, and rebuked. — James F. Cooper

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

Hope is the most treacherous of all human fancies. — James F. Cooper

Aristocracy: A combination of many powerful men, for the purpose of maintaining their own particular interests. It is consequently a concentration of all the most effective parts of a community for a given end, hence its energy, efficiency and success. — James F. Cooper

The vulgar charge that the tendency of democracies is to leveling, meaning to drag all down to the level of the lowest, is singularly untrue; its real tendency being to elevate the depressed to a condition not unworthy of their manhood. — James F. 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 F. Cooper

The sun had not risen, but the vault of heaven was rich with the winning, softness that "brings and shuts the day," while the whole air was filled with the carols of birds, the hymns of the feathered tribe. — James F. Cooper

There is a destiny in war, to which a brave man knows how to submit with the same courage that he faces his foes. — James F. Cooper

As for bread, I count that for nothin'. We always have bread and potatoes enough; but I hold a family to be in a desperate way when the mother can see the bottom of the pork barrel. Give me children that's raised on good sound pork afore all the game in the country. Game's good as a relish and so's bread; but pork is the staff of life ... My children I calkerlate to bring up on pork with just as much bread and butter as they want. — James F. Cooper

It is seldom men think of death in the pride of their health and strength. — James F. Cooper

It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered before the adverse hosts could meet. A wide and apparently an impervious boundary of forests severed the possessions of the hostile provinces of France and England. The hardy colonist, and the trained European who fought at his side, frequently expended months in struggling against the rapids of the streams, or in effecting the rugged passes of the mountains, in quest of an opportunity to exhibit their courage in a more martial conflict. — James F. Cooper

We can all perceive the difference between ourselves and our inferiors, but when it comes to a question of the difference between us and our superiors we fail to appreciate merits of which we have no proper conceptions. — James F. Cooper

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

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

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 F. Cooper

Systems are to be appreciated by their general effects, and not by particular exceptions. — James F. 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 F. Cooper

A soul,
a spark of the never-dying flame that separates man from all the other beings of earth. — James F. Cooper

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

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

I do not pretend that all that white men do is properly Christianized ... — James F. Cooper

The expanse of the ocean is seldom seen by the novice with indifference. — James F. Cooper

Hebrews . This book is much superior to most of the writings attributed to St. Paul, though passages in the other books are very admirable. — James F. Cooper

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

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

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

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

Many words are in a state of mutation, the pronunciation being unsettled even in the best society, a result that must often arise where language is as variable and undetermined as the English. — James F. Cooper

Apathy is the great requisite for the station; for woe betide the wretch who fancies any modicum of zeal. — James F. Cooper

The American doctrinaire is the converse of the American demagogue, and, in this way, is scarcely less injurious to the public. The first deals in poetry, the last in cant. He is as much a visionary on one side, as the extreme theoretical democrat is a visionary on the other. — James F. Cooper

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

At no period of the naval history of the world, is it probable that Marines were more important than during the War of the Revolution, — James F. Cooper

Ignorance and superstition ever bear a close and mathematical relation to each other. — James F. Cooper

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

Superstition is a quality that seems indigenous to the ocean. — James F. Cooper

It is the besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which the masses of men exhibit their tyranny. — James F. Cooper

The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity. — James F. Cooper

Property is desirable as the ground work of moral independence, as a means of improving the faculties, and of doing good to others, and as the agent in all that distinguishes the civilized man from the savage. — James F. Cooper

Should we distrust the man because his manners are not our manners, and that his skin is dark? — James F. Cooper

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

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 F. Cooper

The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms. — James F. Cooper

There are evils worse than death, — James F. Cooper

These families, you know, are our upper crust, not upper ten thousand. — James F. Cooper

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

One of the most melancholy consequences of this habit of deferring to other nations, and to other systems, is the fact that it causes us to undervalue the high blessings we so peculiarly enjoy; to render us ungrateful towards God, and to make us unjust to our fellow men, by throwing obstacles in their progress towards liberty. — James F. Cooper

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

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

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

Individuality is the aim of political liberty. By leaving 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

The sublimity connected with vastness, is familiar to every eye. — James F. Cooper

The sight of a coward's blood can never make a warrior tremble. — James F. Cooper

No star seemed less than what science has taught us that it is. — James F. Cooper

Everybody says it, and what everybody says must be true. — James F. Cooper

Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party. — James F. 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 F. Cooper

Some changes of language are to be regretted, as they lead to false inferences, and society is always a loser by mistaking names for things. — James F. Cooper

The habit of seen the public rule, is gradually accustoming the American mind to an interference with private rights that is slowly undermining the individuality of the national character. There is getting to be so much public right, that private right is overshadowed and lost. A danger exists that the ends of liberty will be forgotten altogether in the means. — James F. Cooper

Principles ... become modified in practice, by facts. — James F. Cooper

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

When men struggle for the single life God has given them ... even their own kind seem no more than the beasts of the wood. — James F. 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 F. Cooper

Friendship that flows from the heart cannot be frozen by adversity, as the water that flows from the spring cannogt congeal in winter. — James F. Cooper

Contact with the affairs of state is one of the most corrupting of the influences to which men are exposed. — James F. Cooper

If the newspapers are useful in overthrowing tyrants, it is only to establish a tyranny of their own. — James F. Cooper

God has given the salt lick to the deer; and He has given to man, red-skin and white, the delicious spring at which to slake his thirst. — James F. Cooper