Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1902 to 1932, and as Acting Chief Justice of the United States January–February 1930. Noted for his long service, his concise and pithy opinions and his deference to the decisions of elected legislatures, he is one of the most widely cited United States Supreme Court justices in history, particularly for his "clear and present danger" opinion for a...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJudge
Date of Birth8 March 1841
CountryUnited States of America
The only prize much cared for by the powerful is power.
Young man, the secret of my success is that an early age I discovered that I was not God.
I despise making the most of one's time. Half of the pleasures of life consist of the opportunities one has neglected.
It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
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.
No generalization is wholly true—not even this one.
If I were dying, my last words would be: Have faith and pursue the unknown end.
Taxes are what we pay for civilized society
It seems to me that at this time we need education in the obvious more than investigation of the obscure.
In my opinion, economists and sociologists are the people to whom we ought to turn more than we do for instruction in the grounds and foundations of all rational decisions.
[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.
To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.
You make me chuckle when you say that you are no longer young, that you have turned twenty-four. A man is or may be young to after sixty, and not old before eighty.