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A road is a dagger placed in the heart of a wilderness.

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
Dagger
Daggers
Placed
Wilderness
Road
Heart

More quotes by William O. Douglas

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Religious experiences which are as real as life to some may be incomprehensible to others.
William O. Douglas
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No matter what the legislature may say, a man has the right to make his speech, print his handbill, compose his newspaper, and deliver his sermon without asking anyone's permission. The contrary suggestion is abhorrent to our traditions.
William O. Douglas
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The Second Amendment reveals a profound principle of American government - the principle of civilian ascendency over the military.
William O. Douglas
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It seemed to me that I had barely reached the Court when people were trying to get me off.
William O. Douglas
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The first opinion the Court ever filed has a dissenting opinion. Dissent is a tradition of this Court... When someone is writing for the Court, he hopes to get eight others to agree with him, so many of the majority opinions are rather stultified.
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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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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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.
William O. Douglas
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It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest.
William O. Douglas
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The use of violence as an instrument of persuasion is therefore inviting and seems to the discontented to be the only effective protest.
William O. Douglas
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Fear of ideas makes us impotent and ineffective.
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 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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What a man thinks is no concern of the government.
William O. Douglas
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The most important aspect of freedom of speech is freedom to learn. All education is a continuous dialogue - questions and answers that pursue every problem on the horizon. That is the essence of academic freedom.
William O. Douglas
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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
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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
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The Court's great power is its ability to educate, to provide moral leadership.
William O. Douglas
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World federation is an ideal that will not die. More and more people are coming to realize that peace must be more than an interlude if we are to survive that peace is a produce of law and order that law is essential if the force of arms is not to rule the world.
William O. Douglas
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I think that the influence towards suppression of minority views - towards orthodoxy in thinking about public issues - has been more subconscious than unconscious, stemming to a very great extent from the tendency of Americans to conform...not to deviate or depart from an orthodox point of view.
William O. Douglas