Quotes by Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

Humility is the first of the virtues -- for other people.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

I was just going to say, when I was interrupted, that one of the many ways of classifying minds is under the heads of arithmetical and algebraical intellects. All economical and practical wisdom is an extension of the following arithmetical formula: 2 + 2 = 4. Every philosophical proposition has the more general character of the expression a + b = c. We are mere operatives, empirics, and egotists until we learn to think in letters instead of figures.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

When we know what the source of the law has said that it shall be, our authority is at an end
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that are not so.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

[My job is] to see that the game is played according to the rules whether I like them or not.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

I am not at liberty to discuss the justice of the Act.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

To reach the port of Heaven we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it. But we must sail, and not drift or lie at anchor.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

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

Descartes commanded the future from his study more than Napoleon from the throne.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it around. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't say embrace trouble; that's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and you had better be on speaking terms with it.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

Boston State House is the hub of the Solar System. You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crowbar.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes