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The thing I want to do is put as many new ideas into the law as I can, to show how particular solutions involve general theory, and to do it with style. I should like to be admitted to be the greatest jurist in the world.

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.
Many
Theory
Thing
Style
Like
Particular
Jurist
World
Greatest
Jurists
Law
Admitted
Show
Involve
Shows
Solutions
Ideas
General

More quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

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The common law is not a brooding omnipresence in the sky, but the articulate voice of some sovereign or quasi sovereign that can be identified although some decisions with which I have disagreed seem to me to have forgotten the fact.
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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The man of action has the present, but the thinker controls the future.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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One of the eternal conflicts out of which life is made up is that between the effort of every man to get the most he can for his services, and that of society, disguised under the name of capital, to get his services for the least possible return.
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Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.
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We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.
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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.
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The world has its fling at lawyers sometimes, but its very denial is an admission. It feels, what I believe to be the truth, that of all secular professions this has the highest standards.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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The life of the law has not been logic it has been experience.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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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.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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Modesty and reverence are no less virtues of freemen than the democratic feeling which will submit neither to arrogance nor to servility.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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Nothing can be so perfect while we possess it as it will seem when remembered.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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There is one gratification an old author can afford a certain class of critics that namely, of comparing him as he is with what he was. It is a pleasure to mediocrity to have its superiors brought within range.
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The individual will always be a minority. If a man is in a minority of one, we lock him up.
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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The greatest act of faith is when a man understands he is not God.
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I have always sought to guide the future-but it is very lonely sometimes trying to play God.
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It is perfectly easy to be original by violating the laws of decency and the canons of good taste.
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.