William O. Douglas Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by William O. Douglas.
Famous Quotes By William O. Douglas
The function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it invites a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it passes for acceptance of an idea. — William O. Douglas
The free state offers what a police state denies - the privacy of the home, the dignity and peace of mind of the individual. — William O. Douglas
No patent medicine was ever put to wider and more varied use than the Fourteenth Amendment. — William O. Douglas
The Second Amendment reveals a profound principle of American government - the principle of civilian ascendency over the military. — William O. Douglas
Christianity has sufficient inner strength to survive and flourish on its own. It does not need state subsidies, nor state privileges, nor state prestige. The more it obtains state support, the greater it curtails human freedom. — William O. Douglas
The law is not a series of calculating machines where answers come tumbling out when the right levers are pushed. — William O. Douglas
One aspect of modern life which has gone far to stifle men is the rapid growth of tremendous corporations. Enormous spiritual sacrifices are made in the transformation of shopkeepers into employees ... The disappearance of free enterprise has led to a submergence of the individual in the impersonal corporation in much the same manner as he has been submerged in the state in other lands. — William O. Douglas
Tell the FBI that the kidnappers should pick out a judge that Nixon wants back. — William O. Douglas
The first opinion the Court ever filed has a dissenting opinion. Dissent is a tradition of this Court ... When someone is writing for the Court, he hopes to get eight others to agree with him, so many of the majority opinions are rather stultified. — William O. Douglas
The rules when the giants play are the same as when the pygmies enter the market. — William O. Douglas
Freedom of movement is the very essence of our free society
once the right to travel is curtailed, all other rights suffer. — William O. Douglas
One who comes to the Court must come to adore, not to protest. That's the new gloss on the 1st Amendment. — William O. Douglas
The people, the ultimate governors, must have absolute freedom of, and therefore privacy of, their individual opinions and beliefs regardless of how suspect or strange they may appear to others. Ancillary to that principle is the conclusion that an individual must also have absolute privacy over whatever information he may generate in the course of testing his opinions and beliefs. — William O. Douglas
The concept of the public welfare is broad and inclusive ... the values it represents are spiritual as well as physical, aesthetic as well as monetary. It is within the power of the legislature to determine that the community should be beautiful as well as healthy, spacious as well as clean, well balanced as well as carefully patroled. — William O. Douglas
Only when there is a wilderness can man harmonize his inner being with the wavelengths of the earth. When the earth, its products, its creatures, become his concern, man is caught up in a cause greater than his own life and more meaningful. Only when man loses himself in an endeavor of that magnitude does he walk and live with humanity and reverence. — William O. Douglas
Men need to know the elemental challenges that sea and mountains present. They need to know what it is to be alive and to survive when great storms come. They need to unlock the secrets of streams, lakes, and canyons and to find how these treasures are veritable storehouses of inspiration. They must experience the sense of mastery of adversity. They must find a peak or a ridge that they can reach under their own power alone. — William O. Douglas
Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.
[The One Un-American Act, Speech to the Author's Guild Council in New York, on receiving the 1951 Lauterbach Award (December 3, 1952)] — William O. Douglas
It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest. — William O. Douglas
Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even for the same performance. — William O. Douglas
Men may believe what they cannot prove. They may not be put to the proof of their religious doctrines or beliefs. Religious experiences which are as real as life to some may be incomprehensible to others. — William O. Douglas
Realization of this need means adults must awaken to the urgency of the young people's unrest-in other words there must be created an adult unrest against the inequities and injustices in the present system. If the government is in jeopardy, it is not because we are unable to cope with revolutionary situations. Jeopardy means that either the leaders or the people do not realize they have all the tools required to make the revolution come true. The tools and the opportunity exist. Only the moral imagination is missing. — William O. Douglas
But our society - unlike most in the world - presupposes that freedom and liberty are in a frame of reference that makes the individual, not government, the keeper of his tastes, beliefs, and ideas; that is the philosophy of the First Amendment; and it is this article of faith that sets us apart from most nations in the world. — William O. Douglas
We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights-older than our political parties, older than our school system. — William O. Douglas
The right to dissent is the only thing that makes life tolerable for a judge of an appellate court ... the affairs of government could not be conducted by democratic standards without it. — William O. Douglas
If discrimination based on race is constitutionally permissible when those who hold the reins can come up with "compelling" reasons to justify it, then constitutional guarantees acquire an accordionlike quality. — William O. Douglas
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. — William O. Douglas
Man must be able to escape civilization if he is to survive. Some of his greatest needs are for refuges and retreats where he can recapture for a day or a week the primitive conditions of life. — William O. Douglas
I learned that the richness of life is found in adventure ... It develops self-reliance and independence. Life then teems with excitement. There is stagnation only in security. — William O. Douglas
No matter what the legislature may say, a man has the right to make his speech, print his handbill, compose his newspaper, and deliver his sermon without asking anyone's permission. The contrary suggestion is abhorrent to our traditions. — William O. Douglas
The association promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any involved in any prior decisions. — William O. Douglas
I have the same confidence in the ability of our people to reject noxious literature as I have in their capacity to sort out the true from the false in theology, economics, or any other field. — William O. Douglas
The challenge to our liberties comes frequently not from those who consciously seek to destroy our system of government, but from men of goodwill - good men who allow their proper concerns to blind them to the fact that what they propose to accomplish involves an impairment of liberty. — William O. Douglas
The interests of the corporation state are to convert all the riches of the earth into dollars. — William O. Douglas
Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us? — William O. Douglas
Among the liberties of citizens that are guaranteed are ... the right to believe what one chooses, the right to differ from his neighbor, the right to pick and choose the political philosophy he likes best, the right to associate with whomever he chooses, the right to join groups he prefers ... — William O. Douglas
We recognize the force of the argument that the effects of war under modern conditions may be felt in the economy for years and years, and that if the war power can be used in days of peace to treat all the wounds which war inflicts on our society, it may not only swallow up all other powers of Congress but largely obliterate the Ninth and the Tenth Amendments as well. — William O. Douglas
Our upside down welfare state is socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor. — William O. Douglas
Motion pictures are of course a different medium of expression than the public speech, the radio, the stage, the novel, or the magazine. But the First Amendment draws no distinction between the various methods of communicating ideas. — William O. Douglas
There is no superior person by constitutional standards. An applicant who is white is entitled to no advantage by reason of that fact, nor is he subject to any disability, no matter what his race or color. Whatever his race, an applicant has a constitutional right to have his application considered on its individual merits. — William O. Douglas
The one governmental agency that has no ambition. — William O. Douglas
The Arctic has a call that is compelling. The distant mountains [of the Brooks Range in Alaska] make one want to go on and on over the next ridge and over the one beyond. The call is that of a wilderness known only to a few ... This last American wilderness must remain sacrosanct. — William O. Douglas
Trees have judicial standing, and probably grass too. — William O. Douglas
Any test that turns on what is offensive to the communitys standards is too loose, too capricious, too destructive of freedom of expression to be squared with the First Amendment. Under that test, juries can censor, suppress, and punish what they dont like, provided the matter relates to sexual impurity or has a tendency to excite lustful thoughts. This is community censorship in one of its worst forms. It creates a regime where in the battle between the literati and the Philistines, the Philistines are certain to win. — William O. Douglas
The First Amendment, however, does not say that in every and all respects there shall be a separation of Church and State. Rathe, it studiously defines the manner, the specific ways, in which there shall be no concert or union or dependency one on the other. That is the common sense of the matter. Otherwise the state and religion would be aliens to each other. — William O. Douglas
The most important aspect of freedom of speech is freedom to learn. All education is a continuous dialogue - questions and answers that pursue every problem on the horizon. That is the essence of academic freedom. — William O. Douglas
The First and Fourteenth Amendments say that Congress and the States shall make "no law" which abridges freedom of speech or of the press. In order to sanction a system of censorship I would have to say that "no law" does not mean what it says, that "no law" is qualified to mean "some" laws. I cannot take this step. — William O. Douglas
The function of the prosecutor under the federal Constitution is not to tack as many skins of victims as possible against the wall. His function is to vindicate the rights of the people as expressed in the laws and give those accused of crime a fair trial. — William O. Douglas
World federation is an ideal that will not die. More and more people are coming to realize that peace must be more than an interlude if we are to survive; that peace is a produce of law and order; that law is essential if the force of arms is not to rule the world. — William O. Douglas
When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional rights it acts lawlessly and the citizen can take matters into his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all. — William O. Douglas
To be whole and harmonious, man must also know the music of the beaches and the woods. He must find the thing of which he is only an infinitesimal part and nurture it and love it, if he is to live. — William O. Douglas
The Free Exercise Clause protects the individual from any coercive measure that encourages him toward one faith or creed, discourages him from another, or makes it prudent or desirable for him to select one and embrace it. — William O. Douglas
The framers of the constitution knew human nature as well as we do. They too had lived in dangerous days; they too knew the suffocating influence of orthodoxy and standardized thought. They weighed the compulsions for restrained speech and thought against the abuses of liberty. They chose liberty.
[Beauharnais v.Illinois, 342 U.S. 250, 287 (1952) (dissenting)] — William O. Douglas
The court is really the keeper of the conscience, and the conscience is the Constitution. — William O. Douglas
We have a system which, though far from perfect, is strong with idealism. It gives elbow room for men of all races and all beliefs. It is vital and dynamic. And it works. We have the means of shaping the world in our pattern. If we do, freedom will be assured for all men. The decision is in the hands of this generation. It is a challenge to our political competence. For Western civilization it is the greatest challenge of all time. — William O. Douglas
The purpose of the University of Washington cannot be to produce black lawyers for blacks, Polish lawyers for Poles, Jewish lawyers for Jews, Irish lawyers for Irish. It should be to produce good lawyers for Americans and not to place First Amendment barriers against anyone. — William O. Douglas
The thrill of tramping alone and unafraid through a wilderness of lakes, creeks, alpine meadows, and glaciers is not known to many. A civilization can be built around the machine but it is doubtful that a meaningful life can be produced by it ... When man worships at the feet of avalas creations. When he feels the wind blowing through him on a high peak or sleeps under a closely matted white bark pine in an exposed basin, he is apt to find his relationship to the universe. — William O. Douglas
When a man knows how to live amid danger, he is not afraid to die. When he is not afraid to die, he is, strangely, free to live. — William O. Douglas
A reporter is no better than his source of information. — William O. Douglas
Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. — William O. Douglas
The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.
[Public Utilities Commission v. Pollak, 343 U.S. 451, 467 (1952) (dissenting)] — William O. Douglas
The Court's great power is its ability to educate, to provide moral leadership. — William O. Douglas
The Constitution favors no racial group, no political or social group. — William O. Douglas
It seemed to me that I had barely reached the Court when people were trying to get me off. — William O. Douglas
I think that the influence towards suppression of minority views - towards orthodoxy in thinking about public issues - has been more subconscious than unconscious, stemming to a very great extent from the tendency of Americans to conform ... not to deviate or depart from an orthodox point of view. — William O. Douglas
The use of violence as an instrument of persuasion is therefore inviting and seems to the discontented to be the only effective protest. — William O. Douglas
A road is a dagger placed in the heart of a wilderness. — William O. Douglas
We must realize that today's establishment is the new George III. Whether it will continue to adhere to his tactics, we do not know. If it does, the redress, honored in tradition, is also revolution. — William O. Douglas
What we must remember, however, is that preservation of liberties does not depend on motives. A suppression of liberty has the same effect whether the suppressor be a reformer or an outlaw. The only protection against misguided zeal is constant alertness to infractions of the guarantees of liberty contained in our Constitution. Each surrender of liberty to the demands of the moment makes easier another, larger surrender ... — William O. Douglas
The dominant purpose of the First Amendment was to prohibit the widespread practice of government suppression of embarrassing information. — William O. Douglas
The liberties of none are safe unless the liberties of all are protected. — William O. Douglas
When man ventures into the wilderness, climbs the ridges, and sleeps in the forest, he comes in close communion with his Creator. When man pits himself against the mountain, he taps inner springs of his strength. He comes to know himself. — William O. Douglas
The river, for example, is the living symbol of all the life it sustains or nourishes - fish, aquatic insects, water ouzels, otter, fisher, deer, elk, bear, and all other animals, including man, who are dependent on it or who enjoy it for its sight, its sound, or its life. The river as plaintiff speaks for the ecological unit of life that is part of it. — William O. Douglas
Acceptance by government of a dissident press is a measure of the maturity of a nation. — William O. Douglas
Security can only be achieved through constant change, through discarding old ideas that have outlived their usefulness and adapting others to current facts. — William O. Douglas
The truth is that a vast restructuring of our society is needed if remedies are to become available to the average person. Without that restructuring the good will that holds society together will be slowly dissipated ... It is that sense of futility which permeates the present series of protests and dissents. Where there is a persistent sense of futility, there is violence; and that is where we are today. — William O. Douglas
Those in power need checks and restraints lest they come to identify the common good for their own tastes and desires, and their continuation in office as essential to the preservation of the nation. — William O. Douglas
A people who extend civil liberties only to preferred groups start down the path either to dictatorship of the right or the left. — William O. Douglas
We need to be bold and adventurous in our thinking in order to survive. — William O. Douglas
I do not know of any salvation for society except through eccentrics, misfits, dissenters, people who protest, — William O. Douglas
The right to work, I had assumed, was the most precious liberty that man possesses. Man has indeed as much right to work as he has to live, to be free, to own property. — William O. Douglas
Absolute discretion is a ruthless master. It is more destructive of freedom than any of man's other inventions. — William O. Douglas
At the constitutional level where we work, 90 percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections. — William O. Douglas
Power that controls the economy should be in the hands of elected representatives of the people instead of an industrial oligarchy — William O. Douglas
These examples and many others demonstrate an alarming trend whereby the privacy and dignity of our citizens is being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen
a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of man's life at will.
[Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323, 343 (1966) (dissenting)] — William O. Douglas
Hiking a ridge, a meadow, or a river bottom, is as healthy a form of exercise as one can get. Hiking seems to put all the body cells back into rhythm. Ten to twenty miles on a trail puts one to bed with his cares unraveled. — William O. Douglas
Effective self-government cannot succeed unless the people are immersed in a steady, robust, unimpeded, and uncensored flow of opinion and reporting which are continuously subjected to critique, rebuttal, and reexamination. — William O. Douglas
The First Amendment makes confidence in the common sense of our people and in the maturity of their judgement the great postulate of our democracy. — William O. Douglas
Violence has no constitutional sanction; and every government from the beginning has moved against it. But where grievances pile high and most of the elected spokesmen represent the Establishment, violence may be the only effective response. — William O. Douglas
The right to revolt has sources deep in our history. — William O. Douglas
Man is about to be an automaton; he is identifiable only in the computer. As a person of worth and creativity, as a being with an infinite potential, he retreats and battles the forces that make him inhuman. The dissent we witness is a reaffirmation of faith in man; it is protest against living under rules and prejudices and attitudes that produce the extremes of wealth and poverty and that make us dedicated to the destruction of people through arms, bombs, and gases, and that prepare us to think alike and be submissive objects for the regime of the computer. — William O. Douglas
We are rapidly entering the age of no privacy, where everyone is open to surveillance at all times; where there are no secrets from government.
[Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323, 341 (1966) (dissenting)] — William O. Douglas
Man is whole when he is in tune with the winds, the stars, and the hills ... Being in tune with the universe is the entire secrets. — William O. Douglas
The First Amendment ... does not say that in every respect there shall be a separation of Church and State ... Otherwise the state and religion would be aliens to each other - hostile, suspicious, and even unfriendly ... The state may not establish a 'religion of secularism' in the sense of affirmatively opposing or showing hostility to religion, thus preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe. — William O. Douglas
Ideas are indeed the most dangerous weapons in the world. Our ideas of freedom are the most powerful political weapons man has ever forged. — William O. Douglas
The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth. — William O. Douglas