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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.

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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.
Liberty
Involves
Choices
Perpetual
Often
Libertarian
Kind
Necessity
Always
Burden
Men
Heavy
Labor
Dreaded
Choice
Libertarianism

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A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used.
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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.
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Men, like peaches and pears, grow sweet a little while before they begin to decay.
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I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
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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 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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Longevity is having a chronic disease - and taking care of it.
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Young men know the rules, but old men know the exceptions.
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A new and valid idea is worth more than a regiment and fewer men can furnish the former than command the latter.
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There was never an idea started that woke up men out of their stupid indifference but its originator was spoken of as a crank.
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General propositions do not decide concrete cases. The decision will depend on a judgment or intuition more subtle than any articulate major premise.
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For him in vain the envious seasons roll Who bears eternal summer in his soul.
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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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Blood is a destiny. One's genius descends in the stream from long lines of ancestry.
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The greatest act of faith is when a man understands he is not God.
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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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A good soldier, like a good horse, cannot be of a bad color.
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A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.
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Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our fathers have done them or our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a larger part than what we suspect of what we think.
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