Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred.
—William O. Douglas
Topics: Marriage
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
Topics: Violence
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.
—William O. Douglas
Political controls in the sense that we think of bureaus or departments of government can never operate to produce collaboration between groups in the inner wheels of our industrial organization. It must come from inner compulsions and desires.
—William O. Douglas
Topics: Politics
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
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
Topics: Censorship
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
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
Topics: Government
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 constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.
—William O. Douglas
Topics: Government
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 most important aspect of freedom of speech is freedom to learn. All education is a continuous dialogue-questions and answer that pursue every problem to the horizon. That is the essence of academic freedom.
—William O. Douglas
Topics: Education
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
Topics: Wilderness
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
Topics: Safety, Usefullness, Security, Change
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
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
Topics: Audiences
I have yet to meet a successful business owner who has not failed before. What’s the difference between them and the owner-turned-9-to-5? They didn’t let one setback cripple their hunger for success. Don’t you.
—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
Topics: Authority
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
Topics: Protest
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 don’t 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
We must realize that todays 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
Topics: Revolution
Ignorance and illiteracy are obviously not synonymous; even illiterate masses can cast their ballots with intelligence, once they are informed.
—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
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
The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.
—William O. Douglas
Topics: Justice
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
Topics: Ideals
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
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
Topics: Wilderness
The Second Amendment reveals a profound principle of American government – the principle of civilian ascendency over the military.
—William O. Douglas
Topics: Government
Religious experiences which are as real as life to some may be incomprehensible to others.
—William O. Douglas
Topics: Experience
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Felix Frankfurter American Judge
- Earl Warren American Judge
- Andrew Jackson American Head of State
- Charles Evans Hughes American Elected Rep
- John Marshall American Judge
- William Blackstone English Judge
- George Wilshere, 1st Baron Bramwell English Judge
- Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey Scottish Judge, Critic
- Hugo Black American Politician
- Robert F. Kennedy American Politician
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