Quote

The right to work, I had assumed, was the most precious liberty that man possesses. Man has indeed as much right to work as he has to live, to be free, to own property.

William O. Douglas

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Live
Precious
Right
Indeed
Work
Property
Much
Liberty
Men
Economy
Wisdom
Possesses
Politics
Assumed
Free
Liberalism

More quotes by William O. Douglas

Image
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
Image
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
Image
A reporter is no better than his source of information.
William O. Douglas
Image
Power that controls the economy should be in the hands of elected representatives of the people, not in the hands of an industrial oligarchy.
William O. Douglas
Image
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
Image
The one governmental agency that has no ambition.
William O. Douglas
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.
William O. Douglas
Image
My faith is that the only soul a man must save is his own.
William O. Douglas
Image
It is our attitude toward free thought and free expression that will determine our fate. There must be no limit on the range of temperate discussion, no limits on thought. No subject must be taboo. No censor must preside at our assemblies.
William O. Douglas
Image
The Free Exercise Clause protects the individual from any coercive measure that encourages him toward one faith or creed, discourages him from another, or makes it prudent or desirable for him to select one and embrace it.
William O. Douglas
Image
We must realize that today's establishment is the new George III. Whether it will continue to adhere to his tactics, we do not know. If it does, the redress, honored in tradition, is also revolution.
William O. Douglas
Image
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.
William O. Douglas
Image
When a man knows how to live amid danger, he is not afraid to die. When he is not afraid to die, he is, strangely, free to live.
William O. Douglas
Image
Hiking a ridge, a meadow, or a river bottom, is as healthy a form of exercise as one can get. Hiking seems to put all the body cells back into rhythm. Ten to twenty miles on a trail puts one to bed with his cares unraveled.
William O. Douglas
Image
The Framers [of the Constitution] . . . created the federally protected right of silence and decreed that the law could not be used to pry open one's lips and make him a witness against himself.
William O. Douglas
Image
There is no superior person by constitutional standards. An applicant who is white is entitled to no advantage by reason of that fact, nor is he subject to any disability, no matter what his race or color. Whatever his race, an applicant has a constitutional right to have his application considered on its individual merits.
William O. Douglas
Image
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