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The Fifth 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

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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
Good
Civilized
Men
Tyranny
Decent
Friendship
Landmarks
Friend
Amendment
Struggle
Amendments
Free
Fifth
Great
Tyrants

More quotes by William O. Douglas

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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
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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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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
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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
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I hope to be remembered as someone who made the earth a little more beautiful.
William O. Douglas
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Absolute discretion is a ruthless master. It is more destructive of freedom than any of man's other inventions.
William O. Douglas
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What a man thinks is no concern of the government.
William O. Douglas
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I would rather create a precedent than find one.
William O. Douglas
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We need be bold and adventuresome in our thinking in order to survive.
William O. Douglas
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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
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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 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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Acceptance by government of a dissident press is a measure of the maturity of a nation.
William O. Douglas
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The liberties of none are safe unless the liberties of all are protected.
William O. Douglas
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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
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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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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 way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.
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 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