A man is usually more careful of his money than of his principles.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

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.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

Beware how you take away hope from any human being.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

Don't be 'consistent,' but be simply true.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

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.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

It seems to me that at this time we need education in the obvious more than the investigation of the obscure.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

Life is action and passion; therefore, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of the time, at peril of being judged not to have lived.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

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.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

Men must turn square corners when they deal with the Government.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

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.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

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.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

People talk fundamentals and superlatives and then make some changes of detail.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

The great act of faith is when a man decides he is not God.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

The rule of joy and the law of duty seem to me all one.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

To be seventy years young is sometimes for more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote

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.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Quote