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James Fenimore Cooper

United States novelist noted for his stories of American Indians and the frontier life (1789-1851)

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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

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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

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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 Fenimore Cooper

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Everybody says it, and what everybody says must be true.

– James Fenimore 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 Fenimore 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 Fenimore 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 Fenimore Cooper

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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 in a popular base, is in the checks and balances imposed on the public servants

– James Fenimore Cooper

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

– James Fenimore Cooper

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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

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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 Fenimore Cooper

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The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.

– James Fenimore Cooper

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There are numerous instances in which the social inequality of America may do violence to our notions of abstract justice, but the compromise of interests under which all civilized societies must exist, renders this unavoidable....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. The equality of of rights in America, therefore, after allowing for the striking exception of domestic slavery, is only a greater extension of the principles [that] there is no such thing as an equality of condition.

– James Fenimore Cooper

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