Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. - The Common Law (1881)

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But as precedents survive like the clavicle in the cat, long after the use they once served is at an end, and the reason for them has been forgotten, the result of following them must often be failure and confusion from the merely logical point of view.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

State interference is an evil, where it cannot be shown to be a good.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The degree of civilization which a people has reached, no doubt, is marked by their anxiety to do as they would be done by.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience... The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.