Quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

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  • A moment's insight is sometimes worth a lifetime's experience.
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  • The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.
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  • Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
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  • The great act of faith is when a man decides he is not God.
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  • A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimension.
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  • A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.
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  • Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.
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  • To live is to function. That is all there is in living.
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  • A page of history is worth a pound of logic.
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  • To know is not less than to feel.
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  • It is the province of knowledge to speak
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  • To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.
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  • Our test of truth is a reference to either a present or imagined future majority in favour of our view.
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  • The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done.
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  • It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for our country in return.
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  • The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.
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  • A mind stretched by a new idea can never go back to its original dimensions.
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  • A man's mind, stretched by new ideas, may never reurn to it's original dimensions.
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  • 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.
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  • Nothing is so frequent as to mistake an ordinary human gift for a special and extraordinary endowment.
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  • A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanging, 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.
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  • Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at the touch, nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.
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  • I despise making the most of one's time. Half of the pleasures of life consist of the opportunities one has neglected.
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  • If a man hasn't got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has the worse for his patient.
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  • The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in which direction we are moving.
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  • People talk fundamentals and superlatives and then make some changes of detail.
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  • Every year, if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge.
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  • A new and valid idea is worth more than a regiment and fewer men can furnish the former than command the latter.
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  • The great thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving.
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  • We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them.
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