Oliver Wendell Holmes Men Quotations

The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars great men.

Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way - and the fools know it.

A woman never forgets her sex. She would rather talk with a man than an angel, any day.

Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor. But if a man hasn't got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has, the worse for his patient.

A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.

Stupidity often saves a man from going mad.

The man who is always worrying about whether or not his soul would be damned generally has a soul that isn't worth a damn.

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.

Revolutions are not made by men in spectacles.

There are one-story intellects, two-story intellects, and three-story intellects with skylights. All fact collectors with no aim beyond their facts are one-story men. Two-story men compare reason and generalize, using labors of the fact collectors

Controversy equalizes fools and wise men - and the fools know it

You commit a sin of omission if you do not utilize all the power that is within you. All men have claims on man, and to the man with special talents, this is a very special claim. It is required that a man take part in the actions and clashes of his

the hydrostatic paradox of controversy. Don't you know what that means? Well, I will tell you. You know that, if you had a bent tube, one arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would stand at the same height in one as in the other. Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way. And the fools know it.

... the hydrostatic paradox of controversy. Don't you know what that means? Well, I will tell you. You know that, if you had a bent tube, one arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, and the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would stand at the same height in one as in the other. Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way. And the fools know it.

The greatest tragedy in America is not the destruction of our natural resources, though that tragedy is great. The truly great tragedy is the destruction of our human resources by our failure to fully utilize our abilities, which means that most men and women go to their graves with their music still in them.

See how he throws his baited lines about,/And plays his men as anglers play their trout.

I hate facts. I always say the chief end of man is to form general propositions - adding that no general proposition is worth a damn.

The truth is that the whole system of beliefs which comes in with the story of the fall of man ... is gently falling out of enlightened human intelligence.

To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad.

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad.

America is the only place where man is full-grown!

Man is born a predestined idealist, for he is born to act. To act is to affirm the worth of an end, and to persist in affirming the worth of an end is to make an ideal.

We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them.