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Literature should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor.
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
Moral
Offends
Censor
Suppressed
Disobedience
Censorship
Code
Merely
Literature
More quotes by William O. Douglas
Absolute discretion is a ruthless master. It is more destructive of freedom than any of man's other inventions.
William O. Douglas
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
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
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
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
Acceptance by government of a dissident press is a measure of the maturity of a nation.
William O. Douglas
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
Fear of ideas makes us impotent and ineffective.
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 rules when the giants play are the same as when the pygmies enter the market.
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
Men may believe what they cannot prove. They may not be put to the proof of their religious doctrines or beliefs. Religious experiences which are as real as life to some may be incomprehensible to others.
William O. Douglas
I have the same confidence in the ability of our people to reject noxious literature as I have in their capacity to sort out the true from the false in theology, economics, or any other field.
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 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
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
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
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
When man ventures into the wilderness, climbs the ridges, and sleeps in the forest, he comes in close communion with his Creator. When man pits himself against the mountain, he taps inner springs of his strength. He comes to know himself.
William O. Douglas