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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.
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
Thought
Easily
Censoring
Speech
Subversion
Revolution
Censored
Teaching
Banned
Dangerous
Restriction
Politics
Censorship
American
Libertarian
Free
Defeat
More quotes by 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
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 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
The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.
William O. Douglas
We need be bold and adventuresome in our thinking in order to survive.
William O. Douglas
Effective self-government cannot succeed unless the people are immersed in a steady, robust, unimpeded, and uncensored flow of opinion and reporting which are continuously subjected to critique, rebuttal, and reexamination.
William O. Douglas
The challenge to our liberties comes frequently not from those who consciously seek to destroy our system of government, but from men of goodwill - good men who allow their proper concerns to blind them to the fact that what they propose to accomplish involves an impairment of liberty.
William O. Douglas
When a man knows how to live amid danger, he is not afraid to die. When he is not afraid to die, he is, strangely, free to live.
William O. Douglas
The Second Amendment reveals a profound principle of American government - the principle of civilian ascendency over the military.
William O. Douglas
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
Hiking a ridge, a meadow, or a river bottom, is as healthy a form of exercise as one can get. Hiking seems to put all the body cells back into rhythm. Ten to twenty miles on a trail puts one to bed with his cares unraveled.
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 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
One who comes to the Court must come to adore, not to protest. That's the new gloss on the First Amendment.
William O. Douglas
The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.
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
Acceptance by government of a dissident press is a measure of the maturity of a nation.
William O. Douglas
Fear of ideas makes us impotent and ineffective.
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
It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest.
William O. Douglas
