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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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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.
Feet
Politeness
Force
Domination
Seems
Pigs
Every
Check
Checks
Impulse
Morality
Ultimate
Trough
More quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.
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Young feller, you will never appreciate the potentialities of the English language until you have heard a Southern mule driver search the soul of a mule.
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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.
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My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins.
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Our test of truth is a reference to either a present or imagined future majority in favour of our view.
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The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.
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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.
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The great end of being is to harmonize man with the order of things, and the church has been a good pitch-pipe, and may be so still.
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Science ... in other words, knowledge-is not the enemy of religion for, if so, then religion would mean ignorance. But it is often the antagonist of school-divinity.
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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.
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Even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most important thing in the end.
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The very minute a thought is threatened with publicity it seems to shrink towards mediocrity.
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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.
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Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned.
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Liberty is often a heavy burden on a man. It involves the necessity for perpetual choice which is the kind of labor men have always dreaded.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort.
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It is very grand to die in harness, but it is very pleasant to have the tight straps unbuckled and the heavy collar lifted from the neck and shoulders.
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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.
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Young men know the rules, but old men know the exceptions.
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It is perfectly easy to be original by violating the laws of decency and the canons of good taste.
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