110+ William O. Douglas Quotes On Slavery, Education And William O Douglas

William O. Douglas was an American judge who served on the Supreme Court from 1939 to 1975. He was an ardent defender of civil liberties and a key figure in the development of environmental law. He was known for his strong dissenting opinions, earning him the nickname “The Great Dissenter.” Following is our collection on famous quotes by William O. Douglas on slavery, education, leadership.

Top 10 William O. Douglas Quotes

1. Freedom of movement is the very essence of our free society -- once the right to travel is curtailed, all other rights suffer.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us?
6. 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.
7. I do not know of any salvation for society except through eccentrics, misfits, dissenters, people who protest.
8. Tell the FBI that the kidnappers should pick out a judge that Nixon wants back.
9. The Second Amendment reveals a profound principle of American government - the principle of civilian ascendency over the military.
10. The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.

William O. Douglas Short Quotes

• Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
• There have always been grievances and youth has always been the agitator.
• Acceptance by government of a dissident press is a measure of the maturity of a nation.
• My faith is that the only soul a man must save is his own.
• The Court's great power is its ability to educate, to provide moral leadership.
• The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.
• No patent medicine was ever put to wider and more varied use than the Fourteenth Amendment.
• Literature should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor.
• The Constitution favors no racial group - no political or social group.
• We need be bold and adventuresome in our thinking in order to survive.

William O. Douglas Quotes About Lawful

Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order, to efficiency of operation, to scientific advancement and the like. — William O. Douglas

When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional right to free speech, 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

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

I would rather create a precedent than find one. — 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

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

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

The Framers [of the Constitution] . . . created the federally protected right of silence and decreed that the law could not be used to pry open one's lips and make him a witness against himself. — William O. Douglas

Common sense often makes good law. — William O. Douglas

The search for static security -- in the law and elsewhere -- is misguided. The fact is security can only be achieved through constant change, adapting old ideas that have outlived their usefulness to current facts. — William O. Douglas

William O. Douglas Quotes About People

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

Power that controls the economy should be in the hands of elected representatives of the people, not in the hands of an industrial oligarchy. — 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

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 constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people. — William O. Douglas

We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being. — 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 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 great and invigorating influences in American life have been the unorthodox: the people who challenge an existing institution of way of life, or say and so things that make people think. — William O. Douglas

Ive often thought that if our zoning boards could be put in charge of botanists, of zoologists and geologists, and people who know about the earth, we would have much more wisdom in such planning than we have when we leave it to the engineers. — William O. Douglas

William O. Douglas Quotes About Free

It is our attitude toward free thought and free expression that will determine our fate. There must be no limit on the range of temperate discussion, no limits on thought. No subject must be taboo. No censor must preside at our assemblies. — William O. Douglas

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

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. — 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

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 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

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

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

William O. Douglas Quotes About Life

The day should come when all of the forms of life... will stand before the court - the pileated woodpecker as well as the coyote and bear, the lemmings as well as the trout in the streams. — 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

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

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

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

Religious experiences which are as real as life to some may be incomprehensible to others. — William O. Douglas

William O. Douglas Quotes About Freedom

The dominant purpose of the First Amendment was to prohibit the widespread practice of government suppression of embarrassing information. — 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 censor is always quick to justify his function in terms that are protective of society. But the First Amendment, written in terms that are absolute, deprives the States of any power to pass on the value, the propriety, or the morality of a particular expression. — 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

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

The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedoms. — 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

William O. Douglas Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — William O. Douglas

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. — 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 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

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

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

Thus if the First Amendment means anything in this field, it must allow protests even against the moral code that the standard of the day sets for the community. In other words, literature should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor. — 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 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 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

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

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

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

Those in power are blind devotees to private enterprise. They accept that degree of socialism implicit in the vast subsidies to the military-industrial-complex, but not that type of socialism which maintains public projects for the disemployed and the unemployed alike. — 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

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

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

Why cannot we work at cooperative schemes and search for the common ground binding all mankind together? — William O. Douglas

I learned early that the richness of life is found in adventure. Adventure calls on all the faculties of mind and spirit. It develops self-reliance and independence. Life then teems with excitement. But man is not ready for adventure unless he is rid of fear. For fear confines him and limits his scope. He stays tethered by strings of doubt and indecision and has only a small and narrow world to explore. — William O. Douglas

Fear of ideas makes us impotent and ineffective. — William O. Douglas

What a man thinks is no concern of the government. — 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

These unwritten amenities have been in part responsible for giving our people the feeling of independence and self-confidence, the feeling of creativity. These amenities have dignified the right of dissent and have honored the right to be nonconformists and the right to defy submissiveness. They have encouraged lives of high spirits rather than hushed, suffocating silence. — William O. Douglas

This freedom of movement is the very essence of our free society, setting us apart. Like the right of assembly and the right of association, it often makes all other rights meaningful-knowing, studying, arguing, exploring, conversing, observing and even thinking. Once the right to travel is curtailed, all other rights suffer, just as when curfew or home detention is placed on a person. — 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

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

The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth. — William O. Douglas

The conscience of this nation is the Constitution. — William O. Douglas

The struggle is always between the individual and his sacred right to express himself and the power structure that seeks conformity, suppression, and obedience. — William O. Douglas

The privacy and dignity of our citizens are 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 a person's life. — William O. Douglas

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

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

Those who already walk submissively will say there is no cause for alarm. But submissiveness is not our heritage. The First Amendment was designed to allow rebellion to remain as our heritage. The Constitution was designed to keep government off the backs of the people. The Bill of Rights was added to keep the precincts of belief and expression, of the press, of political and social activities free from surveillance. The Bill of Rights was designed to keep agents of government and official eavesdroppers away from assemblies of people. The aim was to allow men to be free and independent and to assert their rights against government. — 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 court is really the keeper of the conscience, and the conscience is the Constitution. — 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

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

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

As night-fall does not come at once, neither does oppression...It is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air - however slight - lest we become victims of the darkness. — 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 do not sit as a superlegislature to weigh the wisdom of legislation. — 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

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

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

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 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

Life Lessons by William O. Douglas

1. William O. Douglas believed that individuals should be free to make their own decisions and that the government should not interfere in the lives of its citizens. He taught that the power of the government should be limited, and that the people should be allowed to exercise their rights and freedoms.
2. He also believed that the government should not be allowed to infringe upon the rights of individuals, and that the government should be held accountable for its actions. He taught that individuals should be allowed to pursue their dreams and live their lives without interference from the government.
3. Finally, he taught that individuals should be allowed to express their opinions without fear of retribution from the government, and that the government should be held to the highest standards of justice and fairness.