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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.
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
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Confidence
Noxious
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More quotes by 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
The framers of the constitution knew human nature as well as we do. They too had lived in dangerous days they too knew the suffocating influence of orthodoxy and standardized thought. They weighed the compulsions for restrained speech and thought against the abuses of liberty. They chose liberty.
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
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
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 way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.
William O. Douglas
The court is really the keeper of the conscience, and the conscience is the Constitution.
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 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
Our upside down welfare state is socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor.
William O. Douglas
The free state offers what a police state denies - the privacy of the home, the dignity and peace of mind of the individual.
William O. Douglas
The critical point is that the Constitution places the right of silence beyond the reach of 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
Fear of ideas makes us impotent and ineffective.
William O. Douglas
Trees have judicial standing, and probably grass too.
William O. Douglas
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
A road is a dagger placed in the heart of a wilderness.
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
Freedom of movement is the very essence of our free society -- once the right to travel is curtailed, all other rights suffer.
William O. Douglas
Common sense often makes a good law.
William O. Douglas