William O. Douglas quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by William O. Douglas

William O. Douglas Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from William O. Douglas on Wise Famous Quotes.

It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us?

Power that controls the economy should be in the hands of elected representatives of the people instead of an industrial oligarchy

Why cannot we work at cooperative schemes and search for the common ground binding all mankind together?

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.

Fear of ideas makes us impotent and ineffective.

We need to be bold and adventurous in our thinking in order to survive.

The use of violence as an instrument of persuasion is therefore inviting and seems to the discontented to be the only effective protest.

We do not sit as a superlegislature to weigh the wisdom of legislation.

The law is not a series of calculating machines where answers come tumbling out when the right levers are pushed.

The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.

We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights-older than our political parties, older than our school system.

Literature should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor.

We who have the final word can speak softly or angrily. We can seek to challenge and annoy, as we need not stay docile and quiet.

The one governmental agency that has no ambition.

I do not know of any salvation for society except through eccentrics, misfits, dissenters, people who protest,

One who comes to the Court must come to adore, not to protest. That's the new gloss on the 1st Amendment.

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)]

The 5th Amendment is an old friend and a good friend. one of the great landmarks in men's struggle to be free of tyranny, to be decent and civilized.

Tell the FBI that the kidnappers should pick out a judge that Nixon wants back.

There have always been grievances and youth has always been the agitator.

Hiking a ridge, a meadow, a river bottom, is as healthy a form of exercise as one can get.

Freedom of movement is the very essence of our free society
once the right to travel is curtailed, all other rights suffer.

The court is really the keeper of the conscience, and the conscience is the Constitution.

Racial discrimination against a white is as unconstitutional as race discrimination against a black.

The Constitution favors no racial group, no political or social group.

My faith is that the only soul a man must save is his own.

The conscience of this nation is the Constitution.

The dominant purpose of the First Amendment was to prohibit the widespread practice of government suppression of embarrassing information.

We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.

A road is a dagger placed in the heart of a wilderness.

It seemed to me that I had barely reached the Court when people were trying to get me off.

Trees have judicial standing, and probably grass too.

The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.

The Court's great power is its ability to educate, to provide moral leadership.

I would rather create a precedent than find one.

A people who extend civil liberties only to preferred groups start down the path either to dictatorship of the right or the left.

Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred.

The interests of the corporation state are to convert all the riches of the earth into dollars.

Acceptance by government of a dissident press is a measure of the maturity of a nation.

Common sense often makes a good law.

The Second Amendment reveals a profound principle of American government - the principle of civilian ascendency over the military.

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.

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.

Absolute discretion is a ruthless master. It is more destructive of freedom than any of man's other inventions.

The critical point is that the Constitution places the right of silence beyond the reach of government.

No patent medicine was ever put to wider and more varied use than the Fourteenth Amendment.

The free state offers what a police state denies - the privacy of the home, the dignity and peace of mind of the individual.

The rules when the giants play are the same as when the pygmies enter the market.

A reporter is no better than his source of information.

The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.

Ideas are indeed the most dangerous weapons in the world. Our ideas of freedom are the most powerful political weapons man has ever forged.

The liberties of none are safe unless the liberties of all are protected.

Common sense often makes good law.

Our upside down welfare state is socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor.