Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes

A good catchword can obscure analysis for fifty years.

The substance of the law at any given time pretty nearly corresponds, so far as it goes, with what is then understood to be convenient; but its form and machinery, and the degree to which it is able to work out desired results, depend very much upon its past.

A goose flies by a chart the Royal Geographic Society could not improve.

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.

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

Every calling is great when greatly pursued.

I often say that to live sublimely the line of one’s life must end outside the frame like a Japanese drawing.

Deep-seated preferences cannot be argued about — you cannot argue a man into liking a glass of beer — and therefore, when differences are sufficiently far reaching, we try to kill the other man rather than let him have his way. But that is perfectly consistent with admitting that, so far as appears, his grounds are just as good as ours.

The great thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are going.

El estudio racional del derecho es todavía en gran medida el estudio de la historia.

if one of two or more joint wrongdoers has to pay all the damages, he cannot recover contribution from his fellows.

If my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I will help them. Its my job.

One has to try to strike the jugular and let the rest go.

Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.

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.