46 quotes
A wise man once said, "Convention is like the shell to the chick, a protection till he is strong enough to break it through."
Life is not a thing of knowing only — nay, mere knowledge has properly no place at all save as it becomes the handmaiden of feeling and emotion.
Class-Day Oration (1893)
What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty?
Right knows no boundaries and justice no frontiers; the brotherhood of man is not a domestic institution.
Life is made up of constant calls to action, and we seldom have time for more than hastily contrived answers.
Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it…
The judge's authority depends upon the assumption that he speaks with the mouth of others.
The law, being an inherited accumulation, imposes itself on each generation willy-nilly.
Mr. Justice Holmes at Eighty-Five (1926)
No, the children must learn to play by themselves; there is no Jack the master.
Democracy: Its Presumptions and Realities (1932)
There is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally.
Giuseppe v. Walling (1944)
In the end it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy.
Oliver Wendell Holmes lecture delivered at Harvard (1958)
Like John Stuart Mill, he would often begin by stating the other side better than its advocate had stated it himself.
Liberty is so much latitude as the powerful choose to accord to the weak.
The history of man has just begun; in the aeons which lie before him lie limitless hope or limitless despair. The choice is his; the present choice is ours. It is worth the trial.
If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: Thou shalt not ration justice.
This is the most miserable of cases, but we must dispose of it as though it had been presented by actual lawyers.
Learned Hand : The Man and the Judge (1994)
We may not stop until we have done our part to fashion a world in which there shall be some share of fellowship; which shall be better than a den of thieves.
The public needs the equivalent of Chevrolets as well as Cadillacs.
I shall ask no more than that you agree with Dean Inge that even though counting heads is not an ideal way to govern, at least it is better than breaking them.
Democracy: Its Presumptions and Realities (1932)
What to an outsider will be no more than the vigorous presentation of a conviction, to an employee may be the manifestation of a determination which it is not safe to thwart.