Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quotes

Quotes about:

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  A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Inspirational, Wise, Travel

  162 Copy quote

• The mark of a civilized man is his willingness to re-examine his most cherished beliefs.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Men, Belief, Mark

  15 Copy quote

• The greatest act of faith is when a man understands he is not God.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Faith, Humility, Men

  24 Copy quote

• Success. Is not the position where you are standing, but which direction you are going.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Insperational, Where You Are, Position

  104 Copy quote

• My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Swings, Noses, Fists

  91 Copy quote

• Young men know the rules, but old men know the exceptions.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Men, Young, Old Man

  13 Copy quote

• This is a court of law, not a court of justice.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Law, Justice, Court

  94 Copy quote

• Certitude leads to violence. This is a proposition that has an easy application and a difficult one. The easy application is to ideoologues, dogmatists, and bullies--people who think that their rigtness justifies them in imposing on anyone who does not happen to suscribe to their particular ideology, dogma or notion of turf. If the conviction of rightness is powerful enough, resistance to it will be met, sooner or later by force. There are people like this in every sphere of life, and it is natural to feel that the world would be a better place without them!

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Powerful, Thinking, People

  116 Copy quote

• If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Freedom, Hate, Attachment

  United States v. Schwimmer (dissenting opinion) (1929)

  87 Copy quote

• Even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Dog

  The Common Law Lecture 1 (1881)

  28 Copy quote

• 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.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Motivational, Lying, Moving

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

  25 Copy quote

• The history of intellectual growth and discovery clearly demonstrates the need for unfettered freedom, the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable. To curtail free expression strikes twice at intellectual freedom, for whoever deprives another of the right to state unpopular views necessarily also deprives others of the right to listen to those views.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Thinking, Discovery, Views

  15 Copy quote

• I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Civilization, Paying Taxes, Taxation

  "If we want a civilised society, charities can't fill the void left by government" by Debbie Chachra, www.theguardian.com. October 8, 2013.

  87 Copy quote

• The noblest service comes from nameless hands; and the best servant does his work unseen.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Hands, Effort, Unseen

  11 Copy quote

• The man of action has the present, but the thinker controls the future.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Men, Action, Thinker

  "The essential Holmes". Book by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., 1992.

  33 Copy quote

• Certitude is not the test of certainty.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Learning, Tests, Certainty

  Harvard Law Review Natural Law Volume 32, Number 1, November 1918 (p. 40)

  70 Copy quote

• The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Life, Law, Logic

  The Common Law Lecture 1 (1881).

  71 Copy quote

• Lawyers spend their professional careers shoveling smoke.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Funny, Lawyer, Deals

  Attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in "Watergate and the White House" by Edward W. Knappman, p. 100, 1973.

  10 Copy quote

• Liberty is often a heavy burden on a man. It involves the necessity for perpetual choice which is the kind of labor men have always dreaded.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Men, Choices, Liberty

  26 Copy quote

• If you don't know what you want, you will probably never get it.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Glowing, Going With The Flow, Want

  20 Copy quote

• A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Life, Color, Skins

  Towne v. Eisner (1918)

  13 Copy quote

• If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I wouldn't pass it around. Wouldn't be doing anybody a favor. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't say embrace trouble. That's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say, meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Enemy, Favors, Trouble

  19 Copy quote

• Every calling is great when greatly pursued.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  God, Spiritual, Life And Love

  15 Copy quote

• Eloquence may set fire to reason.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Fire, May, Reason

  "Gitlow v. People of New York, 268 U.S. 652". Judicial opinion, 1925.

  18 Copy quote

• While we've youth in our hearts, we can never grow old.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Heart, Age, Youth

  20 Copy quote

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