Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. Quotes

Men of today seem to feel more acutely than ever the paradox of their condition. They know themselves to be the supreme end to which all action should be subordinated, but the exigencies of action force them to treat one another as instruments or obstacles, as means. The more widespread their mastery of the world, the more they find themselves crushed by uncontrollable forces.

What is bad? What is good? What should one love, what hate? Why live, and what am I? What is lie,what is death? What power rules over everything?" he asked himself. And there was no answer to any of these questions except one, which was not logical and was not at all an answer to these questions. This answer was: "You will die--and everything will end. You will die and learn everything--or stop asking.

Of moral purpose I see no trace in Nature. That is an article of exclusively human manufacture and very much to our credit.

I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.

Naturalism teaches one of the most important things in this world. There is only this life, so live wonderfully and meaningfully.

To be human is to keep rattling the bars of the cage of existence, hollering, 'What's it for?'

Man is born passionate of body, but with an innate though secret tendency to the love of Good in his main-spring of Mind. But God help us all! It is at present a sad jar of atoms.

It seems to me that man is made to act rather than to know: the principles of things escape our most persevering researches.

We have fallen into this very mean description of humanity. Naturalism in fiction is too reductive in its definition of human beings.

I see film as a real opportunity to examine the human condition. No matter where the technology goes in the future, the basics don't change. Storytelling is a primitive tribal function. The elders sat around the fires and told these stories as a way to pass on the 'dos' and the 'don'ts.' That will never change.

You can find inspiration for man's behaviour wherever you look.

Artists instinctively want to reflect humanity, their own and each other's, in all its intermittent virtue and vitality, frailty and fallibility.

I believe that all my work explores the human desire or obsession for utopias, and the structure of all my works is the search for utopias lost and rediscovered.

The questions of philosophy proper are human desires and fears and aspirations - human emotions - taking an intellectual form.

Every person who ever had a plan to do anything, and went and did it, or who laid his plan before others, and won their co-operation to do it with him, without going to external authorities to please do the thing for them, was a direct actionist.

Theories—principles—by them if men do not live, by them men are, at least, stirred into life, at the sight of something more noble than themselves.

So long as people believe in the perfectibility of man, they will continue to use those freedom-destroying ‘bad means’ (totalitarianism) that promise the quickest shortcut to this ‘good end.’

Two things in America are astonishing: the changeableness of most human behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are constantly on the move, but the spirit of humanity seems almost unmoved.

The Republic is a dream. Nothing happens unless first a dream.

Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try. For one thing we know beyond all doubt: Nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says, 'It can't be done.'

Science explained people, but could not understand them.

Obviously the idea of being human is a very human idea.

A theme I'm obsessed with is the tension between human nature and the frameworks designed to curb the worst and promote the best of it.

Every person is flawed. Do you think perfection exists? You, me, everyone - we have strengths and shortcomings; that's what makes us human.

The way I see life, there is only one God, and all the rest are human.