Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.: Man

“If you want to know the law and nothing else, you must look at it as a bad man”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

1890s, The Path of the Law (1897)
Context: If you want to know the law and nothing else, you must look at it as a bad man, who cares only for the material consequences which such knowledge enables him to predict, not as a good one, who finds his reasons for conduct, whether inside the law or outside of it, in the vaguer sanctions of conscience.

Law

“The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Attributed in the Sioux City Journal http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/ (6 Jul 2008), p. A8
In fact, from a " Valedictory Address https://books.google.com/books?id=7joCAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA426&dq=The+young+man+knows+the+rules,+but+the+old+man+knows+the+exceptions&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAmoVChMI1-e4oOewyAIVWFmICh0eVQsI#v=onepage&q=%22The%20young%20man%20knows%20the%20rules%2C%20but%20the%20old%20man%20knows%20the%20exceptions%22&f=false, delivered to the Graduating Class of the Bellevue Hospital College" in 1871 by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr, reprinted in the New York Medical Journal 13 (April 1871): 426.
Misattributed

For Men

“The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

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

Falseness

“I think it not improbable that man, like the grub that prepares a chamber for the winged thing it never has seen but is to be — that man may have cosmic destinies that he does not understand.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

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

Understanding , Thinking

“Young man, the secret of my success is that at an early age I discovered that I was not God.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

On his 90th birthday to a journalist (8 March 1931), as quoted in Information 2000: Library and Information Services for the 21st Century, Vol. 1991, Part 2 (1992) by the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, p. 272.
1930s

For Men , God , Secret , Age

“Certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

1890s, The Path of the Law (1897)

“I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

1880s, In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched With Fire (1884)

Life , Thinking , Passion , Time

“For the rational study of the law the blackletter man may be the man of the present, but the man of the future is the man of statistics and the master of economics.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

1890s, The Path of the Law (1897)

Law , Study , Future

“Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Often given as: A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.
Or: A mind that is stretched by a new idea can never go back to its old dimensions.
Actually by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Senior, from " Autocrat of the Breakfast Table https://books.google.com/books?id=BoQ3AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA502&dq=%22stretched+by+a+new+idea%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwidspn60tTJAhVJ1GMKHbt3Bn0Q6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=%22stretched%20by%20a%20new%20idea%22&f=false", originally published in The Atlantic, September 1858.
Misattributed

Idea

“Vanity is the most philosophical of those feelings that we are taught to despise. For vanity recognizes that if a man is in a minority of one we lock him up, and therefore longs for an assurance from others that one's work has not been in vain.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

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

Feeling

“To allow opposition by speech seems to indicate that you think the speech impotent, as when a man says that he has squared the circle, or that you do not care whole-heartedly for the result, or that you doubt either your power or your premises. But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas —that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

250 U.S. at 630.
1910s, Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616 (1919)

Men , Truth , Faith , Idea

“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

“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 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

“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

“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

“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

“A man may fulfil the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Question