Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Politics
Censorship
American
Libertarian
Free
Defeat
Thought
Easily
Censoring
Speech
Subversion
Revolution
Censored
Teaching
Banned
Dangerous
Restriction
More quotes by William O. Douglas
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
I hope to be remembered as someone who made the earth a little more beautiful.
William O. Douglas
I've often thought that if planners were botanists, zoologists, geologists, and people who know about the earth, we would have much more wisdom in such planning than we have when we leave it to the engineers.
William O. Douglas
Trees have judicial standing, and probably grass too.
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
Political controls in the sense that we think of bureaus or departments of government can never ope to produce collaboration between groups in the inner wheels of our industrial organization. It must come from inner compulsions and desires.
William O. Douglas
Religious experiences which are as real as life to some may be incomprehensible to others.
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
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
The one governmental agency that has no ambition.
William O. Douglas
The dominant purpose of the First Amendment was to prohibit the widespread practice of government suppression of embarrassing information.
William O. Douglas
It seemed to me that I had barely reached the Court when people were trying to get me off.
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 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
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.
William O. Douglas
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
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
The Arctic has a call that is compelling. The distant mountains [of the Brooks Range in Alaska] make one want to go on and on over the next ridge and over the one beyond. The call is that of a wilderness known only to a few...This last American wilderness must remain sacrosanct.
William O. Douglas
We need be bold and adventuresome in our thinking in order to survive.
William O. Douglas
There is no superior person by constitutional standards. An applicant who is white is entitled to no advantage by reason of that fact, nor is he subject to any disability, no matter what his race or color. Whatever his race, an applicant has a constitutional right to have his application considered on its individual merits.
William O. Douglas
