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… - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Our test of truth is a reference to either a present or an imagined future majority in favor of our view.

In other words, those great judges, although of course aware that a ship is no more alive than a mill-wheel, thought that not only the law did in fact deal with it as if it were alive, but that it was reasonable that the law should do so. The reader will observe that they do not say simply that it is reasonable on grounds of policy to sacrifice justice to the owner to security for somebody else but that it is reasonable to deal with the vessel as an offending thing. Whatever the hidden ground of policy may be, their thought still clothes itself in personifying language.

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