Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was an American judge and legal scholar renowned for his contributions to American jurisprudence. His judicial opinions and writings, particularly during his tenure on the U.S. Supreme Court, have had a lasting impact on legal theory and practice, shaping the interpretation of constitutional law.

"A man is usually more careful of his money than of his principles."



"Man's mind, stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions."



"To be seventy years young is sometimes for more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old."



"Every event that a man would master must be mounted on the run, and no man ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped past him."



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



"A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions."



"A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used."



"A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born."



"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."



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



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



"A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience."



"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins."



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



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



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



"We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe."



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



"Men must turn square corners when they deal with the Government."



"To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old."



"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."



"There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise."

