The law embodies the story of a nation’s development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corol… - Oliver Wendell Holmes

The prophecies of what the courts will do in fact, and nothing more pretentious, are what I mean by the law.

Every year, if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge.

Law, being a practical thing, must found itself on actual forces. It is quite enough, therefore, for the law, that man, by an instinct which he shares with the domestic dog, and of which the seal gives a most striking example, will not allow himself to be dispossessed, either by force or fraud, of what he olds, without trying to get it back again. Philosophy may find a hundred reasons to justify the instinct, but it would be totally immaterial if it should condemn it and bid us surrender without a murmur.