Interview in the documentary-film What the Health by Kip Andersen (2017).
“I would never use a long word, even, where a short one would answer the purpose. I know there are professors in this country who 'ligate' arteries. Other surgeons only tie them, and it stops the bleeding just as well.”
'Scholastic and Bedside Teaching', Introductory Lecture to the Medical Class of Harvard University (6 Nov 1867). In Medical Essays 1842-1882 (1891), 302.
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Oliver Wendell Holmes 135
Poet, essayist, physician 1809–1894Related quotes

"Politics and the English Language" (1946)
Context: Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

On an interview on The O'Reilly Factor (6 February 2016)
2010s, 2016, February

Homecoming saga, The Memory Of Earth (1992)
Interview in the documentary-film What the Health by Kip Andersen (2017).

Source: Selected Writings

J. Agee, trans. (1989), p. 5
Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock] (1987)