The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving.

Meaning of the quote

The quote suggests that what matters most is not where you are right now, but the direction you are heading. Even if you haven't reached your goal yet, the fact that you are making progress and moving forward is the truly important thing. It's about focusing on your growth and improvements, not just your current status. The quote encourages us to keep moving forward and not get discouraged by where we are at the moment.

About Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

More about the author

More quotes from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Don’t be ‘consistent,’ but be simply true.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Life is action and passion; therefore, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of the time, at peril of being judged not to have lived.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

A new and valid idea is worth more than a regiment and fewer men can furnish the former than command the latter.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

On the whole, I am on the side of the unregenerate who affirms the worth of life as an end in itself, as against the saints who deny it.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

You make me chuckle when you say that you are no longer young, that you have turned twenty-four. A man is or may be young to after sixty, and not old before eighty.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

To have doubted one’s own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

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, Jr.

People talk fundamentals and superlatives and then make some changes of detail.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

To be seventy years young is sometimes for more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Most of the things we do, we do for no better reason than that our fathers have done them or our neighbors do them, and the same is true of a larger part than what we suspect of what we think.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The only prize much cared for by the powerful is power.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

It seems to me that at this time we need education in the obvious more than the investigation of the obscure.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

A man is usually more careful of his money than of his principles.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Every event that a man would master must be mounted on the run, and no man ever caught the reins of a thought except as it galloped past him.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

As life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time, at the peril of being not to have lived.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

I despise making the most of one’s time. Half of the pleasures of life consist of the opportunities one has neglected.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Nothing is so commonplace has the wish to be remarkable.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at the touch, nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The great act of faith is when a man decides he is not God.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Men must turn square corners when they deal with the Government.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The greatest act of faith is when a man understands he is not God.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Carve every word before you let it fall.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Man’s mind, stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Beware how you take away hope from any human being.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Young man, the secret of my success is that an early age I discovered that I was not God.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

A child’s education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The rule of joy and the law of duty seem to me all one.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.