James Fenimore Cooper Quotes
The press, like fire, is an excellent servant, but a terrible master.
James Fenimore Cooper, 1789-1851, American novelist, The American Democrat, 1838
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The evils of the time were even worse than in modern times. Most newspapers, journals, and periodicals were in 1835 actually owned and operated by political parties or people totally identified with political parties. In modern times, there are publications and blogs which are controlled by political forces, but most are not.
Sherman felt that the newspapers of North and South fired up hatred of one side against the other and especially in the South, falsely reported the chances of the Confederacy and made rational Southerners who wanted to minimize the death and destruction to their people were made to feel like traitors and cowards.
Justice Blackmun was widely quoted by the press for criticizing his Supreme Court colleagues in a St. Louis speech. The justice believed that he had been misquoted and also quoted out of context. He wrote a letter to his fellow justices.
James Fenimore Cooper was an American writer of the first half of the 19th century. His historical romances depicting frontier and Native American life from the 17th to the 19th centuries created a unique form of American literature. He lived much of his boyhood and the last fifteen years of life in Cooperstown, New York, which was founded by his father William Cooper on property that he owned. Cooper became a member of the Episcopal Church shortly before his death and contributed generously to it. He attended Yale University for three years, where he was a member of the Linonian Society.
