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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

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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
Call
Distant
Known
Compelling
Lasts
Mountains
Sacrosanct
American
Wilderness
Ridge
Last
Range
Ridges
Next
Remain
Arctic
Must
Mountain
Alaska
Make
Beyond
Brooks

More quotes by William O. Douglas

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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.
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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.
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The day should come when all of the forms of life... will stand before the court - the pileated woodpecker as well as the coyote and bear, the lemmings as well as the trout in the streams.
William O. Douglas
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Fear of ideas makes us impotent and ineffective.
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If discrimination based on race is constitutionally permissible when those who hold the reins can come up with compelling reasons to justify it, then constitutional guarantees acquire an accordion-like quality.
William O. Douglas
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The rules when the giants play are the same as when the pygmies enter the market.
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I learned that the richness of life is found in adventure. . . . It develops self-reliance and independence. Life then teems with excitement. There is stagnation only in security.
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The law is not a series of calculating machines where answers come tumbling out when the right levers are pushed.
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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.
William O. Douglas
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Violence has no constitutional sanction and every government from the beginning has moved against it. But where grievances pile high and most of the elected spokesmen represent the Establishment, violence may be the only effective response.
William O. Douglas
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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
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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 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.
William O. Douglas
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It seemed to me that I had barely reached the Court when people were trying to get me off.
William O. Douglas
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Christianity has sufficient inner strength to survive and flourish on its own. It does not need state subsidies, nor state privileges, nor state prestige. The more it obtains state support the greater it curtails human freedom.
William O. Douglas
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Motion pictures are of course a different medium of expression than the public speech, the radio, the stage, the novel, or the magazine. But the First Amendment draws no distinction between the various methods of communicating ideas.
William O. Douglas
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It is our attitude toward free thought and free expression that will determine our fate. There must be no limit on the range of temperate discussion, no limits on thought. No subject must be taboo. No censor must preside at our assemblies.
William O. Douglas
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Ideas are indeed the most dangerous weapons in the world. Our ideas of freedom are the most powerful political weapons man has ever forged.
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