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Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Quotes
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Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was an American jurist who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1902 to 1932. Holmes is one of the most widely cited Supreme Court justices and among the most influential American judges in history, noted for his long service, pithy opinions—particularly those on civil liberties and American constitutional democracy—and deference to the decisions of elected legislatures. Holmes retired from the court at the age of 90, an unbeaten record for oldest justice on the Supreme Court. He previously served as a Brevet Colonel in the American Civil War, in which he was wounded three times, as an associate justice and chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and as Weld Professor of Law at his alma mater, Harvard Law School. His positions, distinctive personality, and writing style made him a popular figure, especially with American progressives.During his tenure on the U.S. Supreme Court, to which he was appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1902, he supported the constitutionality of state economic regulation and came to advocate broad freedom of speech under the First Amendment, after, in Schenck v. United States , having upheld for a unanimous court criminal sanctions against draft protestors with the memorable maxim that "free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic" and formulating the groundbreaking "clear and present danger" test. Later that same year, in his famous dissent in Abrams v. United States , he wrote that "the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.... That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment." He added that "we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death...."He was one of only a handful of justices known as a scholar; The Journal of Legal Studies has identified Holmes as the third-most-cited American legal scholar of the 20th century. Holmes was a legal realist, as summed up in his maxim, "The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience", and a moral skeptic opposed to the doctrine of natural law. His jurisprudence and academic writing influenced much subsequent American legal thinking, including the judicial consensus upholding New Deal regulatory law and the influential American schools of pragmatism, critical legal studies, and law and economics. Wikipedia  

✵ 8. March 1841 – 6. March 1935
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. photo
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.: 107   quotes 7   likes

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Quotes

“A page of history is worth a volume of logic.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

New York Trust Co. v. Eisner, 256 U.S. 345, 349 (1921).
1920s

History

“Constitutions are intended to preserve practical and substantial rights, not to maintain theories.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Davis v. Mills, 194 U.S. 451, 457 (1904).
1900s

“A second class mind, but a first class temperament.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

A summation of his opinion of Theodore Roosevelt, indicated in various letters, but not recorded in so succinct a form; often incorrectly stated as his opinion of Franklin D. Roosevelt, as indicated in the p. xiv–xv Introduction to The Essential Holmes (1992) http://books.google.com/books?id=HamEkfqdMcEC&pg=PR14&lpg=PR14, edited by Richard A. Posner.
Attributions

“There are some men, who as they approach 70, read the Bible and prepare to die. Others prepare themselves to live to 90. It has been my observation that if a man prepares to live to 90, but dies at 70, no harm is done. If however, a man prepares to live to 70 but ends up dying at 90, then his last 20 years will be hell.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

citation needed
1930s

Men , Hell , Reading

“A good catchword can obscure analysis for fifty years.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Quoted by Wendell Willkie during an America's Town Meeting of the Air broadcast, at The Town Hall in New York City, (6 January 1938) http://books.google.com/books?id=GekBAAAAMAAJ&q=%22A+good+catchword%22+%22can+obscure+analysis+for+fifty+years%22&pg=A21#v=onepage.

“One has to try to strike the jugular and let the rest go.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Speech on the death of Walbridge Abner Field, Chief Justice of Massachusetts (25 November 1899), reported in Speeches by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1900), p. 77.
1900s

“The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the closer it contracts.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., in "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" in The New England Magazine, Vol. 1 (1831), p. 431.
Misattributed

Light

“The only simplicity for which I would give a straw is that which is on the other side of the complex — not that which never has divined it.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

"Holmes-Pollock Letters : The Correspondence of Mr. Justice Holmes and Sir Frederick Pollock, 1874-1932" (2nd ed., 1961), p. 109.
Often quoted as "I wouldn't give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity; I would give my right arm for the simplicity on the far side of complexity" and attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr..
1930s

“A Constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory... It is made for people of fundamentally differing views, and the accident of our finding certain opinions natural and familiar, or novel, and even shocking, ought not to conclude our judgment upon the question whether statutes embodying them conflict with the Constitution of the United States.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

198 U.S. at 76.
1900s, Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905)

People , Question , Nature

“Keep government poor and remain free.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Attributed to Holmes in a speech by Ronald Reagan (June 15,1982); reported as a misattribution by Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 46-47.
Misattributed

“General propositions do not decide concrete cases.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

198 U.S. at 76.
1900s, Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905)

“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.

Pennsylvania Coal Company v. H. J. Mahon, 260 U.S. 415, 415 (1922).
1920s

“The aim of the law is not to punish sins, but is to prevent certain external results.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Commonwealth v. Kennedy, 170 Mass. 18, 20 (1897) (opinion of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts).
1890s

Law

“I do not think the United States would come to an end if we lost our power to declare an Act of Congress void. I do think the Union would be imperiled if we could not make that declaration as to the laws of the several States.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

1910s, "Law and the Court" (1913)

Law , Thinking

“Deep-seated preferences cannot be argued about — you cannot argue a man into liking a glass of beer — and therefore, when differences are sufficiently far reaching, we try to kill the other man rather than let him have his way. But that is perfectly consistent with admitting that, so far as appears, his grounds are just as good as ours.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

1910s, "Natural Law", 32 Harvard Law Review 40, 41 (1918)

Way , Beer , Appearance

“A man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Also reported as "One's mind" instead of "A man's mind", and "can never go back" or "never regains" instead of "never goes back"; most likely properly attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Misattributed

Powerful , Idea

“The interpretation of constitutional principles must not be too literal. We must remember that the machinery of government would not work if it were not allowed a little play in its joints.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Writing for the Court, Bain Peanut Co. v. Pinson, 282 U.S. 499, 501 (1931).
1930s

“A moment's insight is sometimes worth a lifetime's experience.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., in "The Professor at the Breakfast-Table" in The Atlantic Monthly Vol. 4 (1859), p. 505.
Misattributed

“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.

Speech to the Bar Association of Boston, in Speeches (1913), p. 85.
1910s

Love , Bird , Thinking

“Life is action, the use of one's powers. As to use them to their height is our joy and duty, so it is the one end that justifies itself.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Speech to the Bar Association of Boston, in Speeches (1913), p. 85.
1910s

Life , Joy

“The great act of faith is when a man decides that he is not God.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Letter http://archive.org/stream/thoughtandcharac032117mbp#page/n495/mode/2up/search/great+faith+man+God to William James (24 March 1907).
1900s

God , Faith

“Philosophy may have gained by the attempts in recent years to look through the fiction to the fact and to generalize corporations, partnerships, and other groups into a single conception. But to generalize is to omit, and, in this instance, to omit one characteristic of the complete corporation, as called into being under modern statutes, that is most important in business and law.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Donnell v. Herring-Hall-Marvin Safe Co., 208 U.S. 267, 273 (1908).
1900s

Law , Business , Partnership

“The law, so far as it depends on learning, is indeed, as it has been called, the government of the living by the dead. To a very considerable extent no doubt it is inevitable that the living should be so governed. The past gives us our vocabulary and fixes the limits of our imagination; we cannot get away from it. There is, too, a peculiar logical pleasure in making manifest the continuity between what we are doing and what has been done before. But the present has a right to govern itself so far as it can; and it ought always to be remembered that historic continuity with the past is not a duty, it is only a necessity.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

"Learning and Science", speech at a dinner of the Harvard Law School Association in honor of Professor C. C. Langdell (June 25, 1895); reported in Speeches by Oliver Wendell Holmes (1896). p. 67-68.
1890s

Pleasure , Law , Imagination , Learning

“Gentlemen, to the lady without whom I should never have survived for eighty, nor sixty, nor yet thirty years. Her smile has been my lyric, her understanding, the rhythm of the stanza. She has been the spring wherefrom I have drawn the power to write the words. She is the poem of my life.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Attribution reported in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989), which states that this is not verified in works about him nor in Magnificent Yankee, the film about him. Holmes expressed a similar sentiment in a letter to Sir Frederick Pollock (May 24, 1929): "For sixty years she made life poetry for me". Mark De Wolfe Howe, ed., Holmes-Pollock Letters (1941), vol. 2, p. 243.
Attributions

Life , Smile , Spring , Understanding

“A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he was born.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

More likely attributable to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Misattributed

Education

“As I grow older I grow calm. If I feel what are perhaps an old man's apprehensions, that competition from new races will cut deeper than working men's disputes and will test whether we can hang together or can fight.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

1910s, "Law and the Court" (1913)

Men , Feeling , Fight

“The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree. When a nation is at war many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47, 52 (3 March 1919).
1910s

Men , War , Peace , Question

“Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man's nose begins.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Various permutations of this quote have been attributed to Holmes, but its was actually written by Zechariah Chafee, "Freedom of Speech in Wartime", 32 Harvard Law Review 932, 957 (1919).
Misattributed

“Old age is always fifteen years older than I am.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Actually by financier Bernard Baruch.
Misattributed

Age

“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.

1910s, "Law and the Court" (1913)

Men , Education , Fear , Law

“Men must turn square corners when they deal with the Government.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Rock Island C.R.R. v. United States, 254 U.S. 141, 143 (22 November 1920).
1920s

Men

“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 the time in which it is used.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Towne vs. Eisner, 245 U.S. 418, 425 (7 January 1918).
1910s

Color , Time

“Even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

"Early Forms of Liability," Lecture I from The Common Law. (1909).
1900s

Dogs

“One of the eternal conflicts out of which life is made up is that between the effort of every man to get the most he can for his services, and that of society, disguised under the name of capital, to get his services for the least possible return.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Ibid.
1890s

Life , Effort

“If I were dying, my last words would be, Have faith and pursue the unknown end.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Letter to John Ching Hsiung Wu (1924), published in Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: His Book Notices and Uncollected Letters and Papers (1936) by Harry Clair Shriver, p. 175.
1920s

Faith

“If in the long run the beliefs expressed in proletarian dictatorship are destined to be accepted by the dominant forces of the community, the only meaning of free speech is that they should be given their chance and have their way.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Gitlow v. People of New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925) (dissenting).
1920s

Way , Chance , Communication