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Talk:Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

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Latest comment: 8 years ago by 78.133.49.191 in topic I have heard...

I have heard...

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I have heard that the following quote originated with Oliver Wendell Homles. I was wondering if this was true and if so from what publication? If this is his quote, I think it would be a great addition to his page.

Thanks!

"I wouldn't give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity; I would give my right arm for the simplicity on the far side of complexity."

Somebody suggested it might be his son that said this, but there was no verification for that given, so I reinserted it.Wolfkeeper 19:51, 12 March 2010 (UTC)Reply

Actually, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. did say it, or something like it, in a letter to Sir Frederick Pollock in the 1930s.78.133.49.191 15:43, 11 February 2016 (UTC)Reply

"The only simplicity for which I would give a straw is that which is on the other side of the complex — not that which never has divined it." - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. "Holmes-Pollock Letters : The Correspondence of Mr. Justice Holmes and Sir Frederick Pollock, 1874-1932" (2nd ed., 1961), p. 109.

Clean-up needed

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Moved here for working on. Gordonofcartoon 02:29, 4 December 2009 (UTC)Reply

  • "...the white man hates him [the Indian], and hunts him down like the wild beasts of the forest, and so the red-crayon sketch is rubbed out, and the canvas is ready for a picture of manhood a little more like God's own image."[1] (Now sourced)
  • "Gentlemen, damn the sphenoid bone!"[2] (Uncertain. James Rushmore Wood was identified as long ago as 1912 as saying this.[3])
  1. Thomas F. Gossett (1963) Race: the History of an Idea in America (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press). 243.
  2. Human Anatomy Reference Center, Quotable Quotes in Anatomy
  3. Kelly, Howard A. "A Cyclopedia of American Medical Biography." Philadelphia: Saunders, 1912. vol2, p526. (Available on Google Books)

Unsourced

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  • What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.