Oliver Wendell Holmes Quotes

“Life is a struggle, and it is the struggle that gives it meaning. The only thing to do was to give one’s all, and leave the consequences to fate.7”
― Stephen Budiansky, Oliver Wendell Holmes: A Life in War, Law, and Ideas

“provisions of the Constitution . . . are organic, living institutions transplanted from English soil.50 The most important provisions . . . constitute the original inheritance of the American people, which they brought over with them from England. . . . Constitutions are not made, but they grow by an inherent law of progress and adaptation to changing circumstances.”
― Stephen Budiansky, Oliver Wendell Holmes: A Life in War, Law, and Ideas

“He would come to insist as corner stone of his legal philosophy that law is fundamentally a statement of society’s willingness to use force, every law means I will sooner kill than not have my way, as he put it, It was because he did not want the men who threw ideas around ever again to escape responsibility for where those ideas led, it was the same reason he lost the enthusiastic belief he once had in the cause of women suffrage, political decisions had better come from those who do the killing… In war time there’s more justification for limiting speech since the danger is proportionately greater.”
― Stephen Budiansky, Oliver Wendell Holmes: A Life in War, Law, and Ideas