Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Quotes
The only prize much cared for by the powerful is power.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell. Speeches. Little, Brown, and Company, 1913, p. 100.
In a variant of Lord Acton’s famous quotation {292904} Caro focused on what people did with power once they had achieved it. This, he believed, revealed character.
Mytilene was at war with Athens. Pittacus suggested that instead of the armies fighting, the war should be decided by a battle between him and the Athenian General who accepted. Pittacus won and was the Ruler of Athens, where he became quite popular. He wrote all his laws and decrees in poetry. He resigned after 10 years. He was considered one of the 7 great Greek Sages.
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.
