James F. Cooper Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“Ignorance and superstition ever bear a close and mathematical relation to each other.”

“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.”

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