Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quotes - Page 3

I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country.

I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy - I don't disparage envy, but I don't accept it as legitimately my master.

Why should you row a boat race? Why endure the long months of pain in preparation for a fierce half hour that will leave you all but dead? Does anyone ask the question? Is there anyone who would not go through all the costs, and more, for the moment when anguish breaks into triumph or even for the glory of having nobly lost? Is life less than a boat race? If a man will give the blood in his body to win the one, will he spend all the might of his soul to prevail in the other?

Deep-seated preferences cannot be argued about - you cannot argue a man into liking a glass of beer.

We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.

Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it.

There is a little plant called reverence in the corner of my soul's garden, which I love to have watered once a week.

[The Constitution] is an experiment as all life is an experiment.

The law is the witness and external deposit of our moral life. Its history is the history of the moral development of the race.

The root of joy, as of duty, is to put all one's powers towards some great end.

Be willing to commit yourself to a course, perhaps a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out.

General propositions do not decide concrete cases. The decision will depend on a judgment or intuition more subtle than any articulate major premise.

Blood is a destiny. One's genius descends in the stream from long lines of ancestry.

I think it not improbable that man, like the grub that prepares a chamber for the winged thing it never has seen but is to be - that man may have cosmic destinies that he does not understand.

The language of judicial decision is mainly the language of logic. And the logical method and form flatter that longing for certainty and for repose which is in every human mind. But certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.

But the moment you turn a corner you see another straight stretch ahead and there comes some further challenge to your ambition.

Our dead brothers and sisters still live for us and bid us think of life, not death-of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and glory of Spring. As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil, our trumpets sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.

Reason may be the lever, but sentiment gives you the fulcrum and the place to stand on if you want to move the world.

The ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas [and] the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.

No generalization is wholly true—not even this one.

We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible.

To us who remain behind is left this day of memories. Every year--in the full tide of spring, at the height of the symphony of flowers and love and life--there comes a pause, and through the silence we hear the lonely pipe of death.

But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe...that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market... That at any rate is the theory of our constitution.

We expect more of ourselves than we have any right to.

It seems to me that at this time we need education in the obvious more than investigation of the obscure.