Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

Free competition is worth more to society than it costs.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

War? War is an organized bore.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

To know is not less than to feel.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

Taxes are what we pay for civilized society

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

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

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

Eloquence may set fire to reason.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

The individual will always be a minority. If a man is in a minority of one, we lock him up.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

There are many things which we can afford to forget which it is yet well to learn.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

The only condition of peace in this world is to have no ideas, or, at least not to express them.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it around. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

Even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most important thing in the end.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative virtues.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

If wine tells truth - and so have said the wise, It makes me laugh to think how brandy lies!

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

[The Constitution] is an experiment as all life is an experiment.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

To be forgotten is to sleep in peace with the undisturbed myriads, no longer subject to the chills and heats, the blasts,…

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

Whatever disagreement there may be as to the scope of the phrase "due process of law" there can be no doubt that…

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

In my opinion, economists and sociologists are the people to whom we ought to turn more than we do for instruction in…

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

As for the excellent little wretches who grow up in what they are taught, with never a scruple or a query, ...…

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

The joy of life is to put out one's power in some natural and useful or harmless way. There is no other.…

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at…

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

I think it not improbable that man, like the grub that prepares a chamber for the winged thing it never has seen…

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

History has to be rewritten because history is the selection of those threads of causes or antecedents that we are interested in.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

One of the eternal conflicts out of which life is made up is that between the effort of every man to get…

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

The provisions of the Constitution are not mathematical formulas having their essence in their form; they are organic, living institutions transplanted from…

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

Every idea is an incitement. It offers itself for belief, and if believed it is acted on unless some other belief outweighs…

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

We are all sentenced to capital punishment for the crime of living, and though the condemned cell of our earthly existence is…

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

When a man holds his tongue it does not signify much. But when a woman dispenses with the office of the mighty…

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe...that the best test of truth…

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

The language of judicial decision is mainly the language of logic. And the logical method and form flatter that longing for certainty…

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

There is no friend like the old friend, who has shared our morning days, No greeting like his welcome, no homage like…

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

I confess that altruistic and cynically selfish talk seem to me about equally unreal. With all humility, I think whatsoever thy hand…

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

A person of genius should marry a person of character.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

While we've youth in our hearts, we can never grow old.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

Certitude is not the test of certainty.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

Lawyers spend their professional careers shoveling smoke.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

Imitation is a necessity of human nature.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr

What I wouldn't give to be seventy again!

— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr