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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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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
Keeper
Keepers
Conscience
Court
Constitution
Really
More quotes by 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 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
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
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
I hope to be remembered as someone who made the earth a little more beautiful.
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
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
Acceptance by government of a dissident press is a measure of the maturity of a nation.
William O. Douglas
Common sense often makes a good law.
William O. Douglas
I've often thought that if planners were botanists, zoologists, geologists, and people who know about the earth, we would have much more wisdom in such planning than we have when we leave it to the engineers.
William O. Douglas
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.
William O. Douglas
Security can only be achieved through constant change, through discarding old ideas that have outlived their usefulness and adapting others to current facts.
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
The purpose of the University of Washington cannot be to produce black lawyers for blacks, Polish lawyers for Poles, Jewish lawyers for Jews, Irish lawyers for Irish. It should be to produce good lawyers for Americans, and not to place First Amendment barriers against anyone.
William O. Douglas
We need be bold and adventuresome in our thinking in order to survive.
William O. Douglas
We do not sit as a super-legislature to weigh the wisdom of legislation.
William O. Douglas
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
The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.
William O. Douglas
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
A reporter is no better than his source of information.
William O. Douglas