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

William O. Douglas

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William O. Douglas
Age: 81 †
Born: 1898
Born: October 16
Died: 1980
Died: January 19
Former Associate Justice Of The Supreme Court Of The United States
Judge
Lawyer
Trade Unionist
University Teacher
William Orville Douglas
William Douglas
Liberties
Protected
None
Atheism
Safe
Unless
Liberty
Freedom

More quotes by William O. Douglas

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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
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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
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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
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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
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Acceptance by government of a dissident press is a measure of the maturity of a nation.
William O. Douglas
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Hiking a ridge, a meadow, a river bottom, is as healthy a form of exercise as one can get.
William O. Douglas
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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
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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
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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 a life.
William O. Douglas
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It seemed to me that I had barely reached the Court when people were trying to get me off.
William O. Douglas
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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
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The court is really the keeper of the conscience, and the conscience is the Constitution.
William O. Douglas
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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
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Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience (in this case, the judge or the jury) that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even for the same performance.
William O. Douglas
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The Court's great power is its ability to educate, to provide moral leadership.
William O. Douglas
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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
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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
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The rules when the giants play are the same as when the pygmies enter the market.
William O. Douglas
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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
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The great and invigorating influences in American life have been the unorthodox: the people who challenge an existing institution or way of life, or say and do things that make people think.
William O. Douglas