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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
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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
Start
Extend
Left
Liberties
Right
Dictatorship
People
Civil
Groups
Liberty
Either
Path
Preferred
More quotes by 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
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
We do not sit as a super-legislature to weigh the wisdom of legislation.
William O. Douglas
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
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
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
The Constitution favors no racial group - no political or social group.
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
We need be bold and adventuresome in our thinking in order to survive.
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
Fear of ideas makes us impotent and ineffective.
William O. Douglas
Racial discrimination against a white is as unconstitutional as race discrimination against a black.
William O. Douglas
The critical point is that the Constitution places the right of silence beyond the reach of government.
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
The one governmental agency that has no ambition.
William O. Douglas
Hiking a ridge, a meadow, a river bottom, is as healthy a form of exercise as one can get.
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
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
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
