Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Kessinger Publishing (2005).
Misattributed
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.:
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“Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.”
Reportedly first said by Holmes in a speech in 1904, alternately phrased as "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society, including the chance to insure", Compania General De Tabacos De Filipinas v. Collector of Internal Revenue, 275 U.S. 87, 100, dissenting; opinion (21 November 1927). The first variation is quoted by the IRS above the entrance to their headquarters at 1111 Constitution Avenue.
1900s
“If you want to know the law and nothing else, you must look at it as a bad man”
1890s, The Path of the Law (1897)
Kontext: If you want to know the law and nothing else, you must look at it as a bad man, who cares only for the material consequences which such knowledge enables him to predict, not as a good one, who finds his reasons for conduct, whether inside the law or outside of it, in the vaguer sanctions of conscience.
“As for us, our days of combat are over.”
"The Soldier's Faith" Memorial Day address at Harvard University (30 May 1895) http://people.virginia.edu/~mmd5f/holmesfa.htm.
1890s
Kontext: As for us, our days of combat are over. Our swords are rust. Our guns will thunder no more. The vultures that once wheeled over our heads must be buried with their prey. Whatever of glory must be won in the council or the closet, never again in the field. I do not repine. We have shared the incommunicable experience of war; we have felt, we still feel, the passion of life to its top.
“Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.”
Address to the Harvard Alumni Association to the Class of '61, in Speeches (1913), p. 96.
1910s
“We see what you are driving at, but you have not said it, and therefore we shall go on as before.”
Johnson v. United States, 163 F. 30 (1st Cir. 1908) (Justice Holmes sitting by designation as a judge of the First Circuit).
1900s
Kontext: The major premise of the conclusion expressed in a statute, the change of policy that induces the enactment, may not be set out in terms, but it is not an adequate discharge of duty for courts to say: We see what you are driving at, but you have not said it, and therefore we shall go on as before.
“Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
U.S. Supreme Court rationale for sterilizing the "unfit." Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, 207 (1927) (endorsing Virginia's eugenics program).
1920s
Kontext: We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.... Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
U.S. Supreme Court rationale for sterilizing the "unfit." Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200, 207 (1927) (endorsing Virginia's eugenics program).
1920s
Kontext: We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.... Three generations of imbeciles are enough.
“When we study law we are not studying a mystery but a well-known profession.”
1890s, The Path of the Law (1897)
Kontext: When we study law we are not studying a mystery but a well-known profession. We are studying what we shall want in order to appear before judges, or to advise people in such a way as to keep them out of court. The reason why it is a profession, why people will pay lawyers to argue for them or to advise them, is that in societies like ours the command of the public force is intrusted to the judges in certain cases, and the whole power of the state will be put forth, if necessary, to carry out their judgments and decrees. People want to know under what circumstances and how far they will run the risk of coming against what is so much stronger than themselves, and hence it becomes a business to find out when this danger is to be feared. The object of our study, then, is prediction, the prediction of the incidence of the public force through the instrumentality of the courts.
“Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire.”
In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched With Fire (1884)
Kontext: We know that, if the armies of our war did anything worth remembering, the credit belongs not mainly to the individuals who did it, but to average human nature. We also know very well that we cannot live in associations with the past alone, and we admit that, if we would be worthy of the past, we must find new fields for action or thought, and make for ourselves new careers.
But, nevertheless, the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. 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. While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference, and do not pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of ambition, we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us.
"The Soldier's Faith" Memorial Day address at Harvard University (30 May 1895) http://people.virginia.edu/~mmd5f/holmesfa.htm.
1890s
Kontext: As for us, our days of combat are over. Our swords are rust. Our guns will thunder no more. The vultures that once wheeled over our heads must be buried with their prey. Whatever of glory must be won in the council or the closet, never again in the field. I do not repine. We have shared the incommunicable experience of war; we have felt, we still feel, the passion of life to its top.
1890s, The Path of the Law (1897)
Kontext: When we study law we are not studying a mystery but a well-known profession. We are studying what we shall want in order to appear before judges, or to advise people in such a way as to keep them out of court. The reason why it is a profession, why people will pay lawyers to argue for them or to advise them, is that in societies like ours the command of the public force is intrusted to the judges in certain cases, and the whole power of the state will be put forth, if necessary, to carry out their judgments and decrees. People want to know under what circumstances and how far they will run the risk of coming against what is so much stronger than themselves, and hence it becomes a business to find out when this danger is to be feared. The object of our study, then, is prediction, the prediction of the incidence of the public force through the instrumentality of the courts.
“Every opinion tends to become a law.”
198 U.S. at 75.
1900s, Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905)
“I can't help preferring champagne to ditch water — I doubt if the universe does.”
Letter to http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HLS.Libr:8362502?n=37 William James (24 March 1907); this was misquoted as "I happen to prefer champagne to ditchwater, but there is no reason to suppose that the cosmos does" in "Our Mission Statement" http://article.nationalreview.com/346187/our-mission-statement/william-f-buckley-jr by William F. Buckley, Jr., in National Review (19 November 1955).
1900s
Southern Pacific Company v. Jensen 244 U.S. 205, 222 (1917) (Holmes, J., dissenting; opinion published (21 May 1917).
1910s
250 U.S. at 628.
1910s, Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616 (1919)
“The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.”
Attributed in the Sioux City Journal http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/ (6 Jul 2008), p. A8
In fact, from a " Valedictory Address https://books.google.com/books?id=7joCAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA426&dq=The+young+man+knows+the+rules,+but+the+old+man+knows+the+exceptions&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAmoVChMI1-e4oOewyAIVWFmICh0eVQsI#v=onepage&q=%22The%20young%20man%20knows%20the%20rules%2C%20but%20the%20old%20man%20knows%20the%20exceptions%22&f=false, delivered to the Graduating Class of the Bellevue Hospital College" in 1871 by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr, reprinted in the New York Medical Journal 13 (April 1871): 426.
Misattributed
250 U.S. at 630-31.
1910s, Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616 (1919)
198 U.S. at 79.
1900s, Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905)
Letter to Sir Frederick Pollock (23 August 1895); reported in Holmes-Pollock Letters: The Correspondence of Mr. Justice Holmes and Sir Frederick Pollock (1961) edited by Mark De Wolfe Howe, Vol. 1, p. 60; also reported in The Mind and Faith of Justice Holmes: His Speeches, Essays, Letters, and Judicial Opinions (1954), p. 437.
1890s
Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 469 (1928) (Holmes, J., dissenting).
1920s
“Beware how you take away hope from any human being.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., in his valedictory address to medical graduates at Harvard University (10 March 1858), published in The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal Vol. LVIII, No. 8 (25 March 1858), p. 158; this has also been paraphrased "Beware how you take away hope from another human being".
Misattributed
Letter to Harold J. Laski (4 March 1920); reported in Holmes-Laski Letters (1953) by Mark DeWolfe Howe, vol. 1, p. 249.
1920s
Frank v. Magnum, 237 U.S. 309, 347 (1915).
1910s
Gompers v. United States, 233 U.S. 604, 610 (1914).
1910s
“Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.”
Brown v. United States, 256 U.S. 335, 343 (16 May 1921).
1920s
1910s, "Natural Law", 32 Harvard Law Review 40, 41 (1918)
Jackman v. Rosenbaum Co., 260 U.S. 22, 31 (1922).
1920s
“Free competition is worth more to society than it costs.”
Vegelahn v. Guntner, 167 Mass. 92, 44 N.E. 1077, 1080 (1896) (Supreme Court of Massachusetts, Holmes dissenting).
1890s
