Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Quotes
Whatever miseries this war brings upon us, it is making us wiser, and, we trust, better. Wiser, for we are learning our weakness, our narrowness, our selfishness, our ignorance, in lessons of sorrow and shame. Better, because all that is noble in men and women is demanded by the time, and our people are rising to the standard the time calls for. For this is the question the hour is putting to each of us: Are you ready, if need be, to sacrifice all that you have and hope for in this world, that the generations to follow you may inherit a whole country whose natural condition shall be peace, and not a broken province which must live under the perpetual threat, if not in the constant presence, of war and all that war brings with it? If we are all ready for this sacrifice, battles may be lost, but the campaign and its grand object must be won.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1809-1894, Author and Physician, Father of the Supreme Court Justice, “Bread and the Newspaper”, The Atlantic Monthly,. September 1861
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Thompson’s son was serving with U. S. forces in the Iraq War at the time.
Thompson’s son was serving with U. S. forces in the Iraq War at the time.
The phrase was picked up by the press, and then became the title to a patriotic song of World War II.
Reports were widespread that General Grant was an alcoholic and was frequently drunk in the field. Lincoln was under pressure to relieve Grant of his command in the West. To a Pennsylvania politician he explained:
This statement is perhaps the greatest and most eloquent description of the United States exceptionalism and its behavior in WWII. Such a statement could only come from a non-American.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1902 to 1932. Noted for his long service, concise and pithy opinions, and deference to the decisions of elected legislatures, he is one of the most widely cited United States Supreme Court justices in history, particularly for opinions on civil liberties and American constitutional democracy, and is one of the most influential American common law judges, honored during his lifetime in Great Britain as well as the United States. Holmes retired from the court at the age of 90, an unbeaten record for oldest justice in the federal Supreme Court (although John Paul Stevens was only 8 months younger when he retired on April 12, 2010). He previously served as an Associate Justice and as Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and was Weld Professor of Law at his alma mater, Harvard Law School.
