A Quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

General propositions do not decide concrete cases. The decision will depend on a judgment or intuition more subtle than any articulate major premise. — © Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
General propositions do not decide concrete cases. The decision will depend on a judgment or intuition more subtle than any articulate major premise.
Make a decision and then make the decision right. Line up your Energy with it. In most cases it doesn't really matter what you decide. Just decide. There are endless options that would serve you enormously well, and all or any one of them is better than no decision.
The heart of mathematics consists of concrete examples and concrete problems. Big general theories are usually afterthoughts based on small but profound insights; the insights themselves come from concrete special cases.
When we're not a party, we sometimes file as amicus, as friend of the court, 25, 30 times a term, sometimes more. And in each of those cases, we've got to decide what position the government's going to take. And that is the solicitor general's job to make that decision.
We feel that our actions are voluntary when they follow a decision and involuntary when they happen without decision. But if a decision itself were voluntary every decision would have to be preceded by a decision to decide - An infinite regression which fortunately does not occur. Oddly enough, if we had to decide to decide, we would not be free to decide
How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?
For every criminal case, the judge must construct a perfect syllogism: the major premise must be the general law; the minor premise, whether or not the action in question is in compliance with the law; and the conclusion, acquittal or punishment.
I think the important thing about my appointment is not that I will decide cases as a woman, but that I am a woman who will get to decide cases.
He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision.
The mathematician starts with a few propositions, the proof of which is so obvious that they are called self-evident, and the rest of his work consists of subtle deductions from them. The teaching of languages, at any rate as ordinarily practiced, is of the same general nature authority and tradition furnish the data, and the mental operations are deductive.
Democracy's premise rests on the notion that the collective wisdom of the majority will prove right more often than it's wrong; that given sufficient opportunity in the pursuit of happiness, your population will develop its talents, its intellect, its better judgment; that over time its capacity for discernment and self-correction will be enlarged.
Everything has a purpose or premise. Every second of our life has its own premise, whether or not we are conscious of it at the time. That premise may be as simple as breathing or as complex as a vital emotional decision, but it is always there.
The ends of scientific classification are best answered, when the objects are formed into groups respecting which a greater number of general propositions can be made, and those propositions more important, than could be made respecting any other groups into which the same things could be distributed. ... A classification thus formed is properly scientific or philosophical, and is commonly called a Natural, in contradistinction to a Technical or Artificial, classification or arrangement.
Coming back to America was, for me, much more of a culture shock than going to India. The people in the Indian countryside don't use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and their intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect in my opinion. That's had a big impact on my work.
Judges decide upon copyright law. They decide upon trademark law. They decide upon scientific issues. They decide upon very complex technical issues on a daily basis. So you must have confidence in the Supreme Court, that they will apply their mind and they will come out with a decision consistent with the Constitution.
You have lived longer than I have and perhaps may have formed a different judgment on better grounds; but my observations do not enable me to say I think integrity the characteristic of wealth. In general I believe the decisions of the people, in a body, will be more honest and more disinterested than those of wealthy men.
One of the many sad results of the Industrial Revolution was that we came to depend more than ever on the intellect, and to ignore the intuition with its symbolic thinking.
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