Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Quotes

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

I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy.

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

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.

Don’t be ‘consistent,’ but be simply true.

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

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

As life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time, at the peril of being not to have lived.

Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.

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

A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.