Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. citations

Page 4

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.”

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

“Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else.”

“Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness.”