Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quotes
-
The great end of being is to harmonize man with the order of things, and the church has been a good pitch-pipe, and may be so still.
→ -
Systems die; instincts remain.
→ -
Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.
→ -
Reason means truth and those who are not governed by it take the chance that someday the sunken fact will rip the bottom out of their boat.
→ -
On the whole, I am on the side of the unregenerate who affirms the worth of life as an end in itself, as against the saints who deny it.
→ -
The riders in a race do not stop when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter before coming to a standstill. There is time to hear the kind voices of friends and say to oneself, The work is done.
→ -
Old age is like an opium dream. Nothing seems real except the unreal.
→ -
Whatever disagreement there may be as to the scope of the phrase "due process of law" there can be no doubt that it embraces the fundamental conception of a fair trial, with opportunity to be heard.
→ -
The noblest service comes from nameless hands; and the best servant does his work unseen.
→ -
Any tax is a discouragement and therefore a regulation so far as it goes.
→ -
The only prize much cared for by the powerful is power. The prize of the general is not a bigger tent, but command.
→ -
The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort.
→ -
Poverty comes pleading not for charity, for the most part, but imploring us to find a purchaser for its unmarketable wares.
→ -
Every man is an omnibus in which his ancestors ride.
→ -
To know is not less than to feel.
→ -
The worst of a modern stylish mansion is that it has no place for ghosts.
→ -
[The Constitution] is an experiment as all life is an experiment.
→ -
Most of us retain enough of the theological attitude to think that we are little gods.
→ -
The very minute a thought is threatened with publicity it seems to shrink towards mediocrity.
→ -
While we've youth in our hearts, we can never grow old.
→ -
The history of what the law has been is necessary to the knowledge of what the law is.
→ -
The common law is not a brooding omnipresence in the sky, but the articulate voice of some sovereign or quasi sovereign that can be identified; although some decisions with which I have disagreed seem to me to have forgotten the fact.
→ -
The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.
→ -
Certitude is not the test of certainty.
→ -
Society is always trying in some way to grind us down to a single flat surface.
→ -
I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
→ -
Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.
→ -
Free competition is worth more to society than it costs.
→ -
No generalization is wholly true—not even this one.
→ -
Man has will, but woman has her way.
→
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
- Born: March 8, 1841
- Died: March 6, 1935
- Occupation: Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Related Authors
-
Louis D. Brandeis Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
Benjamin Cardozo Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
William Howard Taft 27th U.S. President -
Ronald Dworkin Philosopher -
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist -
Felix Frankfurter Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
John Dewey Philosopher -
-
Eugene V. Debs Political leader -
Theodore Roosevelt 26th U.S. President -
Thomas Mann Novelist -
William O. Douglas Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
Richard Posner Jurist -
Melville Fuller Former Chief Justice of the United States -
Learned Hand Judge -
John Marshall Former Chief Justice of the United States -
Earl Warren Former Chief Justice of the United States -
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. Physician -
Charles Evans Hughes Former Governor of New York -
Hugo Black Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States