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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.

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
People
America
Influences
Great
Institution
Way
Existing
Make
Challenge
Things
Institutions
Think
Influence
Thinking
Challenges
Unorthodox
Life
American
Invigorating

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Acceptance by government of a dissident press is a measure of the maturity of a nation.
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The one governmental agency that has no ambition.
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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.
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What a man thinks is no concern of the government.
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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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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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There have always been grievances and youth has always been the agitator.
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A reporter is no better than his source of information.
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I do not know of any salvation for society except through eccentrics, misfits, dissenters, people who protest.
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Tell the FBI that the kidnappers should pick out a judge that Nixon wants back.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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The concept of the public welfare is broad and inclusive ... the values it represents are spiritual as well as physical, aesthetic as well as monetary. It is within the power of the legislature to determine that the community should be beautiful as well as healthy, spacious as well as clean, well balanced as well as carefully patroled.
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Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
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The Fifth Amendment is an old friend and a good friend, one of the great landmarks in men's struggle to be free of tyranny, to be decent and civilized.
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The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.
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The court is really the keeper of the conscience, and the conscience is the Constitution.
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