Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quotes

136 Sourced Quotes

Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
When twenty years ago a vague terror went over the earth and the word socialism began to be heard, I thought and still think that fear was translated into doctrines that had no proper place in the Constitution or the common law. Judges are apt to be naif, simple-minded men, and they need something of Mephistopheles. We too need education in the obvious—to learn to transcend our own convictions and to leave room for much that we hold dear to be done away with short of revolution by the orderly change of law.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
I always say, as you know, that if my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I will help them. It's my job.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
To an imagination of any scope the most far reaching form of power is not money, it is the command of ideas

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
No families take so little medicine as those of doctors, except those of apothecaries.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. 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.... Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Men must turn square corners when they deal with the Government.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
See how he throws his baited lines about,/And plays his men as anglers play their trout.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
It is said that this manifesto is more than a theory, that it was an incitement. Every idea is an incitement.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The power to tax is not the power to destroy while this Court sits.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The liberty of the citizen to do as he likes so long as he does not interfere with the liberty of others to do the same, which has been a shibboleth for some well known writers, is interfered with by school laws, by the Post Office, by every state or municipal institution which takes his money for purposes thought desirable, whether he likes it or not.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Vanity is the most philosophical of those feelings that we are taught to despise. For vanity recognizes that if a man is in a minority of one we lock him up, and therefore longs for an assurance from others that one's work has not been in vain.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The major premise of the conclusion expressed in a statute, the change of policy that induces the enactment, may not be set out in terms, but it is not an adequate discharge of duty for courts to say: We see what you are driving at, but you have not said it, and therefore we shall go on as before.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The aim of the law is not to punish sins, but is to prevent certain external results.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Lawyers spend their professional careers shoveling smoke.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Yes, child of suffering, thou may'st well be sure He who ordained the Sabbath loves the poor!

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
With all humility, I think, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." Infinitely more important than the vain attempt to love one's neighbor as one's self. If you want to hit a bird on the wing, you must have all your will in focus, you must not be thinking about yourself, and equally, you must not be thinking about your neighbor: you must be living in your eye on that bird. Every achievement is a bird on the wing.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The truth is that the whole system of beliefs which comes in with the story of the fall of man... is gently falling out of enlightened human intelligence.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Every event that a man would master must be mounted on the run, and no man ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped past him.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Great cases like hard cases make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason of their importance in shaping the law of the future, but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgement.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
We call those poets who are first to mark, Through earth's dull mist the coming of the dawn, Who see in twilight's gloom the first pale spark, While others only note that day is gone.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.