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History has to be rewritten because history is the selection of those threads of causes or antecedents that we are interested in.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Age: 93 †
Born: 1841
Born: March 8
Died: 1935
Died: March 6
Judge
Jurist
Lawyer
Philosopher
Politician
University Teacher
Boston
Massachusetts
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Oliver W. Holmes
Jr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr
Holmes
Oliver Wendell
Jr.
Oliver Wendell
Jr. Holmes
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Jr
Oliver Holmes
Jr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
jr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Jr.
Selection
Thread
Interested
Causes
History
Antecedents
Rewritten
Threads

More quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

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The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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A new and valid idea is worth more than a regiment and fewer men can furnish the former than command the latter.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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The only prize much cared for by the powerful is power. The prize of the general is not a bigger tent, but command.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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Our morality seems to be only a check on the ultimate domination of force, just as our politeness is a check on the impulse of every pig to put his feet in the trough.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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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.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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A great man represents a great ganglion in the nerves of society, or to vary the figure, a strategic point in the campaign of history, and part of his greatness consists in his being there.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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Even the wisest woman you talk to is ignorant of something you may know, but an elegant woman never forgets her elegance.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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To know is not less than to feel.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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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.
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If you can eat sawdust without butter, you can be a success in the law.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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The man of action has the present, but the thinker controls the future.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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The language of judicial decision is mainly the language of logic. And the logical method and form flatter that longing for certainty and for repose which is in every human mind. But certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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General propositions do not decide concrete cases. The decision will depend on a judgment or intuition more subtle than any articulate major premise.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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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.
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The worst of a modern stylish mansion is that it has no place for ghosts.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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We expect more of ourselves than we have any right to.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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Carve every word before you let it fall.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.