Quote

Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order, to efficiency of operation, to scientific advancement and the like.

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
Giving
Law
Scientific
Pile
Way
Powerful
Reasons
Advancement
Like
Bigs
Private
Sector
Order
National
Operation
Form
Brother
Efficiency
Give
Records
Increasingly
Government
Security
Privacy
Reason
High
Operations

More quotes by William O. Douglas

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Why cannot we work at cooperative schemes and search for the common ground binding all mankind together?
William O. Douglas
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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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We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights-older than our political parties, older than our school system.
William O. Douglas
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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.
William O. Douglas
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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.
William O. Douglas
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The First Amendment makes confidence in the common sense of our people and in the maturity of their judgement the great postulate of our democracy.
William O. Douglas
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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
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Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred.
William O. Douglas
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The struggle is always between the individual and his sacred right to express himself and the power structure that seeks conformity, suppression, and obedience.
William O. Douglas
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The association promotes a way of life, not causes a harmony in living, not political faiths a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any involved in any prior decisions.
William O. Douglas
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When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional right to free speech, it acts lawlessly and the citizen can take matters into his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all.
William O. Douglas
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Tell the FBI that the kidnappers should pick out a judge that Nixon wants back.
William O. Douglas
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The conscience of this nation is the Constitution.
William O. Douglas
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The one governmental agency that has no ambition.
William O. Douglas
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The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.
William O. Douglas
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The rules when the giants play are the same as when the pygmies enter the market.
William O. Douglas
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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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The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.
William O. Douglas
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What a man thinks is no concern of the government.
William O. Douglas
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Trees have judicial standing, and probably grass too.
William O. Douglas