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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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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
Nation
Identify
Nations
Checks
Common
Tyranny
Restraints
Desire
Desires
Continuation
Power
Essential
Lest
Come
Essentials
Tastes
Need
Office
Restraint
Needs
Taste
Preservation

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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.
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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.
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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.
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Absolute discretion is a ruthless master. It is more destructive of freedom than any of man's other inventions.
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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.
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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.
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It seemed to me that I had barely reached the Court when people were trying to get me off.
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Common sense often makes a good law.
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We need be bold and adventuresome in our thinking in order to survive.
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I would rather create a precedent than find one.
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We do not sit as a super-legislature to weigh the wisdom of legislation.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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Our upside down welfare state is socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor.
William O. Douglas
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A reporter is no better than his source of information.
William O. Douglas
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Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
William O. Douglas
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Trees have judicial standing, and probably grass too.
William O. Douglas
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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