The power to tax is not the power to destroy while this Court sits.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Leisure only means a chance to do other jobs that demand attention.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Leisure
With all humility, I think, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.” Infinitely more important than the vain attempt to love one’s neighbor as one’s self. If you want to hit a bird on the wing, you must have all your will in focus, you must not be thinking about yourself, and equally, you must not be thinking about your neighbor: you must be living in your eye on that bird. Every achievement is a bird on the wing.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Humility, Benevolence
For, stripped of the temporary associations which gave rise to it, it is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for our country in return.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Service
Our dead brothers still live for us and bid us think of life, not death—of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and glory of Spring. As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil, our trumpets, sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Remembrance
When twenty years ago a vague terror went over the earth and the word socialism began to be heard, I thought and still think that fear was translated into doctrines that had no proper place in the Constitution or the common law. Judges are apt to be naif, simple-minded men, and they need something of Mephistopheles. We too need education in the obvious—to learn to transcend our own convictions and to leave room for much that we hold dear to be done away with short of revolution by the orderly change of law.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The general rule, at least, is that while property may be regulated to a certain extent, if regulation goes too far it will be recognized as a taking.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Civilization is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Civilization
I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Taxes
Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Aspirations, Goals, Life and Living
A question like the present should be disposed of without undue delay. But a State cannot be expected to move with the celerity of a private business man; it is enough if it proceeds, in the language of the English Chancery, with all deliberate speed.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
For me at least there came moments when faith wavered. But there is the great lesson and the great triumph: keep the fire burning until, by and by, out of the mass of sordid details there comes some result.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Resolve, Perseverance, Endurance
The rule of joy and the law of duty seem to me all one.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Duty
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.
Topics: Opinion, Opinions
Even the wisest woman you talk to is ignorant of something you may know, but an elegant woman never forgets her elegance.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Wealth
Consciously or unconsciously we all strive to make the kind of a world we like.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Action
When I wanted to understand what is happening today, I try to decide what will happen tomorrow; I look back, a page of history is worth a volume of logic.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Understanding, Reflection, History, Past
Great constitutional provisions must be administered with caution. Some play must be allowed for the joints of the machine, and it must be remembered that legislatures are ultimate guardians of the liberties and welfare of the people in quite as great a degree as the courts.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The reward of the general is not a bigger tent, but command.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Success
Life, not the parson, teaches conduct.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Experience
The minute a phrase, becomes current, it becomes an apology for not thinking accurately to the end of the sentence.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Thoughts, Thought
To be master of any branch of knowledge, you must master those which lie next to it; and thus to know anything you must know all.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Knowledge
A man is usually more careful of his money than of his principles.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Money, Integrity
I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy — I don’t disparage envy but I don’t accept it as legitimately my master.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Equality, Passion
The mode in which the inevitable comes to pass is through effort.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Effort, Success & Failure, Achievement
The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts but learning how to make facts live.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Education
The riders in a race do not stop short when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter before coming to a standstill. There is time to hear the kind voice of friends and to say to one’s self: “The work is done.” But just as one says that, the answer comes: “The race is over, but the work never is done while the power to work remains.” The canter that brings you to a standstill need not be only coming to rest. It cannot be while you still live. For to live is to function. That is all there is in living.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Life and Living, Vision
Every living sentence which shows a mind at work for itself is to be welcomed. It is not the first use but the tiresome repetition of inadequate catch words which I am observing—phrases which originally were contributions, but which, by their very felicity, delay further analysis for fifty years. That comes from the same source as dislike of novelty—intellectual indolence or weakness—a slackening in the eternal pursuit of the more exact.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
For I say unto you in all sadness of conviction that to think great thoughts you must be heroes as well as idealists. Only when you have worked alone—when you have felt around you are a black gulf of solitude more isolating than that which surrounds the dying man, and in hope and despair have trusted to your own unshaken will—then only can you gain the secret isolated joy of the thinker, who knows that a hundred years after he is dead and forgotten men who have never heard of him will be moving to the measure of his thought—the subtle rapture of postponed power, which the world knows not because it has no external trappings, but which to his prophetic vision is more real than that which commands an army. And if this joy should not be yours, still it is only thus you can know that you have done what lay in you to do—can say that you have lived, and be ready for the end.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Purpose
Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Law, Lawyers
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Louis Brandeis American Jurist
- Hugo Black American Attorney
- Elliot Richardson American Lawyer
- William Blackstone English Judge
- Felix Frankfurter Austrian-Born Jurist
- Albert Pike American Masonic Scholar
- John Quincy Adams American Head of State
- Archibald Cox American Lawyer
- Learned Hand American Jurist
- Edward Everett Hale American Unitarian Clergyman
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