Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most important thing in the end.

To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.

Every idea is an incitement... eloquence may set fire to reason.

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.

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

It is very lonely sometimes, trying to play God.

Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it.

The mode by which the inevitable comes to pass is effort.

Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.

People talk fundamentals and superlatives and then make some changes of detail.

The only prize much cared for by the powerful is power.

A new untruth is better than an old truth.

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.

The rule of joy and the law of duty seem to me all one.

The great act of faith is when a man decides he is not God.

I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy - I don't disparage envy, but I don't accept it as legitimately my master.

A new and valid idea is worth more than a regiment and fewer men can furnish the former than command the latter.

I despise making the most of one's time. Half of the pleasures of life consist of the opportunities one has neglected.

On the whole, I am on the side of the unregenerate who affirms the worth of life as an end in itself, as against the saints who deny it.

The rules of evidence in the main are based on experience, logic, and common sense, less hampered by history than some parts of the substantive law.

When in doubt, do it.

The language of judicial decision is mainly the language of logic. And the logical method and form flatter that longing for certainty and for repose which is in every human mind. But certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.

It seems to me that at this time we need education in the obvious more than investigation of the obscure.

Beware how you take away hope from another human being.

Between two groups of people who want to make inconsistent kinds of worlds, I see no remedy but force.