Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1935) was an American jurist who served as American Supreme Court associate justice 1902–32. The son of the well-known physician and essayist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Holmes, Jr. became renowned for his sharp, articulate, and dissenting opinions.
Born in Boston, Holmes, Jr. was a professor of law at Harvard, chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court 1899–1902, before becoming an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. During his 30 year-long tenure on the Supreme Court, he became acknowledged as one of the most distinguished jurists of the age. Holmes, Jr. has been called “The Great Dissenter” because of the brilliance of his dissenting opinions.
As a jurist and a legal writer, Holmes, Jr. also contributed to the debate in the early 20th century concerning the role of law in a rapidly changing America. His works include The Common Law (1881,) Speeches (1891, 1913,) and Collected Legal Papers (1920.) Touched with Fire (1946) collects his Civil War diary and letters.
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I have always sought to guide the future— but it is very lonely sometimes trying to play God.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Loneliness, Future
Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Doubt, Uncertainty
But the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done…. The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. It does not even protect a man from an injunction against uttering words that may have all the effect of force…. The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Freedom
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.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
A man is usually more careful of his money than of his principles.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Money, Integrity
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.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most important thing in the end.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Theory
Leisure only means a chance to do other jobs that demand attention.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Leisure
When I wanted to understand what is happening today, I try to decide what will happen tomorrow; I look back, a page of history is worth a volume of logic.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Understanding, Reflection, Past, History
Consciously or unconsciously we all strive to make the kind of a world we like.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Action
The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Advice
I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Opinion
People talk fundamentals and superlatives and then make some changes of detail.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Opinion
It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I wouldn’t pass it around. Wouldn’t be doing anybody a favor. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don’t say embrace trouble. That’s as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say, meet it as a friend, for you’ll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Adversity
A new and valid idea is worth more than a regiment and fewer men can furnish the former than command the latter.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Ideas
I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Life, Getting Going, Inaction, Procrastination, Ability, Life and Living
The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Integrity
For me at least there came moments when faith wavered. But there is the great lesson and the great triumph: keep the fire burning until, by and by, out of the mass of sordid details there comes some result.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Endurance, Perseverance, Resolve
This is a court of law young man, not a court of justice.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Justice, Lawyers
Imitation is a necessity of human nature.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Role models
Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Time, Youth
Even the wisest woman you talk to is ignorant of something you may know, but an elegant woman never forgets her elegance.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Wealth
Fresh air and innocence are good if you don’t take too much of them—but I always remember that most of the achievements and pleasures of life are in bad air.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Topics: Pleasure
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