“Mark this which I am going to say once for all: If I had not force enough to project a principle full in the face of the half dozen most obvious facts which seem to contradict it, I would think only in single file from this day forward.”
Holmes' critique of "single file" thinking foreshadows Fyodor Dostoevsky's attack, in an essay of October 1876, on what he called "the straight-line approach". See Dostoevsky, A Writer's Diary, Volume 1: 1873–1876 (Northwestern University Press, 1997), pp. 641–57, 721–29.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)
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Oliver Wendell Holmes 135
Poet, essayist, physician 1809–1894Related quotes

Writing in the Chartist newspaper (1847), in Marx Engels Collected Works Vol 6, pg 290.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1992990,00.html

Geek Speak Magazine Interview (2010)

“How can I go forward when I don't know which way I'm facing?”
Lyrics, Imagine (1971 album)
Variant: How can I give love when I don't know what it is I'm giving?
"How?" (song)

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), II : The Starting-Point

Letter to John Spencer (19 February 1900), quoted in John Wilson, C.B.: A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (London: Constable, 1973), p. 326
Leader of the Opposition

1960s, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (1967)
Context: A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.