“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.”

— Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

"The Path of the Law," Address to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts at the dedication of the new hall of the Boston University School of Law (8 January 1897), published in Harvard Law Review, Vol. 10 (25 March 1897).
1890s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "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…" by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.?

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.107

United States Supreme Court justice 1841–1935

Related quotes

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice (1813)

“When we are customarily annoyed by what we see as the failings of others, we are judging them by a ludicrous standard: we are assuming that they fully understand our desires, quite possibly better than we do, and that they have nothing to do but arrange things to fall seamlessly into place around our probably ill-communicated wishes.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Confessions of a Conjuror (2010)

“Our problem isn't that we're individualists. It's that our individualism is static rather than dynamic. We value what we think rather than what we do. We forget that we haven't done, or been, what we thought; that the first function of life is action, just as the first property of things is motion.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Education Of the Stoic

Ibid., p. 18.
The Education of the Stoic

“Our habit of constantly and zealously answering to any rabble has already done us a lot of harm and will do much more. … We do not have to apologize for anything. We are a people as all other peoples; we do not have any intentions to be better than the rest. As one of the first conditions for equality we demand the right to have our own villains, exactly as other people have them. … We do not have to account to anybody, we are not to sit for anybody's examination and nobody is old enough to call on us to answer. We came before them and will leave after them. We are what we are, we are good for ourselves, we will not change, nor do we want to.”

Ze'ev Jabotinsky (1880–1940) Jewish leader

Instead of Excessive Apology (1911).

“We are all affected by our pasts, but it is within our power not to let what we have done to dictate what we will do.”

Kristin Cast book Tempted

Source: Tempted

“We are all affected by our pasts, but it is within our power not to let what we have done to dictate what we will do.”

P. C. Cast book Tempted

Source: Tempted

“What we do in every other area of our lives (other than religion), is, rather than respect somebody's beliefs, we evaluate their reasons.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

“At the heart of the matter… our technologies have become more powerful than our theories… We can do with technology what we cannot do with science.”

Paul Cilliers (1956–2011) South African philosopher

Source: Complexity and Postmodernism (1998), p. 1-2; as cited by David Byrne (1999) in: " Complexity and Postmodernism: Book Review http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/2/2/review1.html" in JASSS Vol 2 (2)

“What, then, is to be done? We have to begin with the state: as the incarnation of collective interests, collective purposes, and collective goods. If we cannot learn to “think the state” once again, we shall not get very far. But what precisely should the state do? Minimally, it should not duplicate unnecessarily: as Keynes wrote, “The important thing for Government is not to do things which individuals are doing already, and to do them a little better or a little worse; but to do those things which at present are not done at all.” And we know from the bitter experience of the past century that there are some things that states should most certainly not be doing.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

" What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy? http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2009/12/17/what-is-living-and-what-is-dead-in-social-democrac/" (2009)

“God knows better than we do what we need.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“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.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.107

Related quotes

Related topics