Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. quotes - page 4

Three generations of imbeciles are enough. (Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.)
Every opinion tends to become a law. View quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
It is only the present danger of immediate evil or an intent to bring it about that warrants Congress in setting a limit to the expression of opinion where private rights are not concerned. View quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Only the emergency that makes it immediately dangerous to leave the correction of evil counsels to time warrants making any exception to the sweeping command, "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech." View quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
The liberty of the citizen to do as he likes so long as he does not interfere with the liberty of others to do the same, which has been a shibboleth for some well known writers, is interfered with by school laws, by the Post Office, by every state or municipal institution which takes his money for purposes thought desirable, whether he likes it or not. View quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
A river is more than an amenity, it is a treasure. It offers a necessity of life that must be rationed among those who have power over it. View quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Great cases like hard cases make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason of their importance in shaping the law of the future, but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgement. View quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
I confess that I do not understand the principle on which the power to fix a minimum for the wages of women can be denied by those who admit the power to fix a maximum for their hours of work. I fully assent to the proposition that here as elsewhere the distinctions of the law are distinctions of degree, but I perceive no difference in the kind or degree of interference with liberty, the only matter with which we have any concern, between the one case and the other. The bargain is equally affected whichever half you regulate.... It will need more than the Nineteenth Amendment to convince me that there are no differences between men and women, or that legislation cannot take those differences into account. View quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Some of her answers might excite popular prejudice, but if there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought-not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate. View quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
But as precedents survive like the clavicle in the cat, long after the use they once served is at an end, and the reason for them has been forgotten, the result of following them must often be failure and confusion from the merely logical point of view. View quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Now and then, an extraordinary case may turn up, but constitutional law, like other mortal contrivances, has to take some chances, and in the great majority of instances, no doubt, justice will be done. (Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.)
The elaborate argument against the constitutionality of the Act if interpreted as we read it, in accordance with its obvious meaning does not need an elaborate answer. View quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
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. View quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Get down, you fool! View quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Nature has but one judgment on wrong conduct - if you can call that a judgment which seemingly has no reference to conduct as such - the judgment of death. View quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Life is a roar of bargain and battle, but in the very heart of it there rises a mystic spiritual tone that gives meaning to the whole. It transmutes the dull details into romance. It reminds us that our only but wholly adequate significance is as parts of the unimaginable whole. It suggests that even while living we are living to ends outside ourselves. View quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Constitutions are intended to preserve practical and substantial rights, not to maintain theories. View quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
A second class mind, but a first class temperament. View quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
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. View quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
A good catchword can obscure analysis for fifty years. View quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
One has to try to strike the jugular and let the rest go. (Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.)
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. View quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
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. View quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
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. View quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
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. View quote
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.