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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

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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
Accomplish
Liberties
Liberty
Challenge
Propose
Fact
Allow
Consciously
Comes
Seek
Concerns
Facts
Blind
Involves
Government
Frequently
Good
Concern
Proper
Impairment
Men
Challenges
Destroy
Goodwill
System

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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.
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It seemed to me that I had barely reached the Court when people were trying to get me off.
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Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred.
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The critical point is that the Constitution places the right of silence beyond the reach of government.
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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.
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Religious experiences which are as real as life to some may be incomprehensible to others.
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The rules when the giants play are the same as when the pygmies enter the market.
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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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Common sense often makes a good law.
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The free state offers what a police state denies - the privacy of the home, the dignity and peace of mind of the individual.
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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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The censor is always quick to justify his function in terms that are protective of society. But the First Amendment, written in terms that are absolute, deprives the States of any power to pass on the value, the propriety, or the morality of a particular expression.
William O. Douglas
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If discrimination based on race is constitutionally permissible when those who hold the reins can come up with compelling reasons to justify it, then constitutional guarantees acquire an accordion-like quality.
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 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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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
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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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Acceptance by government of a dissident press is a measure of the maturity of a nation.
William O. Douglas
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Motion pictures are of course a different medium of expression than the public speech, the radio, the stage, the novel, or the magazine. But the First Amendment draws no distinction between the various methods of communicating ideas.
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My faith is that the only soul a man must save is his own.
William O. Douglas