Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Quotes
A river is more than an amenity, it is a treasure.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., 1841-1935, U. S. Supreme Court Justice, New Jersey v. New York, et al, 1931
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He was visiting the Congo where heavily armed poachers were thwarting the outgunned Wildlife Rangers. Klaxon then began training the Wildlife Rangers and getting them more heavily armed and skilled with their weapons and then fought with them and the poachers were routed and the Rangers were much more successful in protecting the elephants and rhinos who had been slaughtered for their tusks and horns, both of with commanded very high prices in Asia.
Many of the wildlife poachers are armed with heavy weapons and modern qeopositioning equipment. The think nothing of killing Wildlife Rangers who try to stop them from killing elephants and rhinos for their tests and horns which are highly prized in Asia. Much of the funding to protect the wildlife of Africa comes from United State Non Profit Organizations for whom spending resources to train Wildlife Rangers to use heavy weapons is not very comfortable. But Kalron and others argue that if the local authorities cannot confront the poachers, there is no practical way to preserve the wildlife.
Many people when they first read this quote assume that it came from some counter-culture radical. It did, but he was a President of the United States.
In 2006 at the age of 44 he was killed while televising and underwater scene with stingrays who are not very dangerous usually. Most people recover from a stingray barb even though it has a mild toxin. However in a very rare occurrence, he was stung right in the heart.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1902 to 1932. Noted for his long service, concise and pithy opinions, and deference to the decisions of elected legislatures, he is one of the most widely cited United States Supreme Court justices in history, particularly for opinions on civil liberties and American constitutional democracy, and is one of the most influential American common law judges, honored during his lifetime in Great Britain as well as the United States. Holmes retired from the court at the age of 90, an unbeaten record for oldest justice in the federal Supreme Court (although John Paul Stevens was only 8 months younger when he retired on April 12, 2010). He previously served as an Associate Justice and as Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and was Weld Professor of Law at his alma mater, Harvard Law School.
