Skip to content

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

Another quote →

Topics

Society

More quotes by 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.

It is better for a man to die at peace with himself than to live haunted by an evil conscience.

The Last of the Mohicans (1826)

When the white man dies, he thinks he is at peace; but the red-men know how to torture even the ghosts of their enemies.

The Last of the Mohicans (1826)

Is it justice to make evil and then punish for it?

The Last of the Mohicans (1826)

History, like love, is so apt to surround her heroes with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness.

The Last of the Mohicans (1826)

All James Fenimore Cooper quotes →

You may also like

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.

William Shakespeare As You Like It (1599)

One country, one constitution, one destiny.

Daniel Webster

Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring — not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive.

Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: James Fenimore Cooper (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.