A Quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Our morality seems to be only a check on the ultimate domination of force, just as our politeness is a check on the impulse of every pig to put his feet in the trough.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Quote Topics

Check Domination Every Feet Force His Impulse Just Morality Only Our Pig Politeness Put Seems Trough Ultimate

Quote Author

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
American - Judge
March 8, 1841 - March 6, 1935

Americans are good with to-do lists; just tell us what to do, and we'll do it. Throughout our history, we have proven that. Colonize. Check. Win our independence. Check. Form a union. Check. Expand to the Pacific. Check. Settle the West. Check. Keep the Union together. Check. Industrialize. Check. Fight the Nazis. Check.

Marianne Williamson

Today, all our wives and husbands have Blackberries or iPhones or Android devices or whatever-the progeny of those original 950 and 957 models that put data in our pockets. Now we all check their email (or Twitter, or Facebook, or Instagram, or) compulsively at the dinner table, or the traffic light. Now we all stow our devices on the nightstand before bed, and check them first thing in the morning. We all do. It's not abnormal, and it's not just for business. It's just what people do. Like smoking in 1965, it's just life.

Ian Bogost

Buttons ... check. Dials ... check. Switches ... check. Little colored lights ... check.

Bill Watterson

I wrote myself a check for ten million dollars for acting services rendered and dated it Thanksgiving 1995. I put it in my wallet and it deteriorated. And then, just before Thanksgiving 1995, I found out I was going to make ten million dollars for Dumb & Dumber. I put that check in the casket with my father because it was our dream together.

Jim Carrey

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men - yes, black men as well as white men - would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The sole impulse which dictates and compels a man's every act: the imperious necessity of securing his own approval, in every emergency and at all costs.... It is our only spur, our whip, our goad, our impelling power; we have no other.

Mark Twain

I hit Instagram and Twitter as soon as I wake up. And then I check my texts and emails. It's funny that I check social media before I check my email.

Guillermo Diaz

Physical nature lies at our feet shackled with a hundred chains. What of the control of human nature? Do not point to the triumphs of psychiatry, social services or the war against crime. Domination of human nature can only mean the domination of every man by himself.

Johan Huizinga

Physical nature lies at our feet shackled with a hundred chains. What of the control of human nature? Do not point to the triumphsof psychiatry, social services or the war against crime. Domination of human nature can only mean the domination of every man by himself.

Johan Huizinga

Every year for New Years I write down all of my goals and dreams and put them in my Bible. At the end of the year I go and pull the paper out and check this off and check that off.

NeNe Leakes

Why can't Google, which likes to see itself as a 'Don't Be Evil' benevolent force in society, just write us a big check for using our stories, so we can keep checks and balances alive and continue to provide the search engine with our stories?

Maureen Dowd

A congressman is a pig. The only way to get his snout from the trough is to rap it sharply with a stick.

Henry Adams

On my income tax 1040 it says 'Check this box if you are blind.' I wanted to put a check mark about three inches away.

Tom Lehrer

I really am a full-blown Scorpio. Whenever I look things up about my sign, it's like, Check, check, check: thoughtful, detailed, moody, stubborn, prideful, emotional.