Oliver Wendell Holmes

Famous quotes containing the words oliver wendell holmes, wendell holmes, oliver wendell, oliver and/or wendell:

    The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.
    Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1935)

    All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called “facts.” They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain. Who does not know fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact or two that they lead after them into decent company like so many bull-dogs, ready to let them slip at every ingenious suggestion, or convenient generalization, or pleasant fancy? I allow no “facts” at this table.
    —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    —First a shiver, and then a thrill,
    Then something decidedly like a spill,—
    And the parson was sitting up on a rock,
    At half-past nine by the meet’n’-house clock,—
    Just the hour of the Earthquake shock!
    MWhat do you think the parson found,
    When he got up and stared around?
    The poor old chaise in a heap or mound,
    As if it had been to the mill and ground!
    Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)

    Lunch? You gotta be kidding. Lunch is for wimps.
    Stanley Weiser, U.S. screenwriter, and Oliver Stone. Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas)

    Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.
    —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)