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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.

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.
Society
Represents
Point
Nerves
History
Consists
Part
Campaign
Great
Campaigns
Men
Greatness
Figure
Vary
Figures
Strategic

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Systems die instincts remain.
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Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.
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Blood is a destiny. One's genius descends in the stream from long lines of ancestry.
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The very minute a thought is threatened with publicity it seems to shrink towards mediocrity.
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Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one.
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The root of joy, as of duty, is to put all one's powers towards some great end.
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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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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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Any tax is a discouragement and therefore a regulation so far as it goes.
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Men must turn square corners when they deal with the Government.
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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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For my part I think it is a less evil that some criminals should escape, than that the government should play an ignoble part.
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If you can eat sawdust without butter, you can be a success in the law.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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Under bad manners, as under graver faults, lies very commonly an overestimate of our special individuality, as distinguished from our generic humanity.
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Young man, the secret of my success is that an early age I discovered that I was not God.
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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.
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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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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.
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Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.
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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.