Quote

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.

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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.
Facts
Sky
Disagreed
Seems
Forgotten
Brooding
Seem
Articulate
Decision
Identified
Law
Sovereignty
Common
Sovereign
Fact
Decisions
Omnipresence
Voice
Although
Quasi

More quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Image
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.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Image
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.
Image
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.
Image
The joy of life is to put out one's power in some natural and useful or harmless way. There is no other. And the real misery is not to do this.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Image
In order to know whether a human being is young or old, offer it food of different kinds at short intervals. If young, it will eat anything at any hour of the day or night.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Image
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.
Image
It seems to me that at this time we need education in the obvious more than investigation of the obscure.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Image
As for the excellent little wretches who grow up in what they are taught, with never a scruple or a query, ... they signify nothing in the intellectual life of the race.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Image
We must think things not words, or at least we must constantly translate our words into the facts for which they stand, if we are to keep to the real and the true.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Image
To an imagination of any scope the most far reaching form of power is not money, it is the command of ideas
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Image
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.
Image
Carve every word before you let it fall.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Image
The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Image
Most people have died before they expire died to all earthly longings, so that the last breath is only, as it were, the locking of the door of the already deserted mansion.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Image
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.
Image
Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Image
If you can eat sawdust without butter, you can be a success in the law.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Image
Go on, fair Science soon to thee Shall Nature yield her idle boast Her vulgar lingers formed a tree, But thou hast trained it to a post.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Image
Men are idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before they always did, they always will and if you don't make it of wood, you must make it of words.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Image
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.