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
Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.
I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.
Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.
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.
The law is the witness and external deposit of our moral life. Its history is the history of the moral development of the race.
Apologizing - a very desperate habit - one that is rarely cured. Apology is only egotism wrong side out.
To brag little, to lose well, / To crow gently if in luck, / To pay up, to own up, / To shut up if beaten, / Are the virtues of a sportingman.
Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.
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.
The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort.
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.
To be master of any branch of knowledge, you must master those which lie next to it, and thus to know anything you must know all.
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.