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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.
Men
Fundamental
Damn
Proposition
Fundamentals
Propositions
Dare
Formula
Worked
Frame
General
Formulas
Worth
Chief
Ends
Chiefs

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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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Fame is the scentless sunflower, with gaudy crown of gold But friendship is the rose, with sweets in every fold.
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The life of the law has not been logic it has been experience.
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People talk fundamentals and superlatives and then make some changes of detail.
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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.
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Old age is like an opium dream. Nothing seems real except the unreal.
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Even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked.
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Every man is an omnibus in which his ancestors ride.
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We are all sentenced to capital punishment for the crime of living, and though the condemned cell of our earthly existence is but a narrow and bare dwelling-place, we have adjusted ourselves to it, and made it tolerably comfortable for the little while we are to be confined in it.
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Men must turn square corners when they deal with the Government.
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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.
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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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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.
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I despise making the most of one's time. Half of the pleasures of life consist of the opportunities one has neglected.
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I know of no teachers so powerful and persuasive as the little army of specialists. They carry no banners, they beat no drums but where they are men learn that bustle and push are not the equals of quiet genius and serene mastery.
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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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Certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.
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Blood is a destiny. One's genius descends in the stream from long lines of ancestry.
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Society is always trying in some way to grind us down to a single flat surface.
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Poverty comes pleading not for charity, for the most part, but imploring us to find a purchaser for its unmarketable wares.
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