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I dare say that I have worked off my fundamental formula on you that the chief end of man is to frame general propositions and that no general proposition is worth a damn.
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.
Damn
Proposition
Fundamentals
Propositions
Dare
Formula
Worked
Frame
General
Formulas
Worth
Chief
Ends
Chiefs
Men
Fundamental
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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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To think great thoughts you must be heroes as well as idealists.
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Be willing to commit yourself to a course, perhaps a long and hard one, without being able to foresee exactly where you will come out.
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Certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.
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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 greatest act of faith is when a man understands he is not God.
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Certitude is not the test of certainty.
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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.
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Systems die instincts remain.
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The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
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To be civilized is to be potentially master of all possible ideas, and that means that one has got beyond being shocked, although one preserves one's own moral aesthetic preferences.
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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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Even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most important thing in the end.
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There is in all men a demand for the superlative, so much so that the poor devil that has no other way of reaching it attains it by getting drunk.
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Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.
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Old age is like an opium dream. Nothing seems real except the unreal.
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Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith.
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The mark of a civilized man is his willingness to re-examine his most cherished beliefs.
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Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.
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