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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

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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
Security
Open
Secret
Law
Surveillance
Age
Rapidly
Times
Entering
Everyone
Secrets
Government
Privacy

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The liberties of none are safe unless the liberties of all are protected.
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I hope to be remembered as someone who made the earth a little more beautiful.
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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.
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At the constitutional level where we work, 90 percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections.
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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.
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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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The Constitution favors no racial group - no political or social group.
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The interests of the corporation state are to convert all the riches of the earth into dollars.
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The Court's great power is its ability to educate, to provide moral leadership.
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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.
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The conscience of this nation is the Constitution.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The free state offers what a police state denies - the privacy of the home, the dignity and peace of mind of the individual.
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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.
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It seemed to me that I had barely reached the Court when people were trying to get me off.
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Security can only be achieved through constant change, through discarding old ideas that have outlived their usefulness and adapting others to current facts.
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One who comes to the Court must come to adore, not to protest. That's the new gloss on the First Amendment.
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The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.
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