A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
A man is usually more careful of his money than of his principles.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
As life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time, at the peril of being not to have lived.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Every event that a man would master must be mounted on the run, and no man ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped past him.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Men must turn square corners when they deal with the Government.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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.
Nothing is so commonplace has the wish to be remarkable.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
People talk fundamentals and superlatives and then make some changes of detail.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The greatest act of faith is when a man understands he is not God.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The only prize much cared for by the powerful is power.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
To be seventy years young is sometimes for more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at the touch, nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
What I wouldn't give to be seventy again!
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
You make me chuckle when you say that you are no longer young, that you have turned twenty-four. A man is or may be young to after sixty, and not old before eighty.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
I hate facts. I always say the chief end of man is to form general propositions -- adding that no general proposition is worth a damn.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
A moment's insight is sometimes worth a lifetime's experience.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanging, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in colour and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Our test of truth is a reference to either a present or imagined future majority in favour of our view.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Young man, the secret of my success is that an early age I discovered that I was not God.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men - from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
It seems to me that at this time we need education in the obvious more than the investigation of the obscure.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
If I were dying my last words would be: Have faith and pursue the unknown end.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Don't you stay at home of evenings? Don't you love a cushioned seat in a corner, by the fireside, with your slippers on your feet?
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Controversy equalizes fools and wise men - and the fools know it.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
But friendship is the breathing rose, with sweets in every fold.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Beware how you take away hope from another human being.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
A few can touch the magic string, and noisy fame is proud to win them: Alas for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them!