James Fenimore Cooper Quotes

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 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.

Superstition is a quality that seems indigenous to the ocean.

No star seemed less than what science has taught us that it is.

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

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

Individuality is the aim of political liberty.

Hope is the most treacherous of all human fancies.

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

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.