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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
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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
Make
Lips
Constitution
Created
Silence
Open
Decreed
Law
Framers
Used
Protected
Right
Witness
More quotes by William O. Douglas
Absolute discretion is a ruthless master. It is more destructive of freedom than any of man's other inventions.
William O. Douglas
I learned that the richness of life is found in adventure. . . . It develops self-reliance and independence. Life then teems with excitement. There is stagnation only in security.
William O. Douglas
The function of the prosecutor under the federal Constitution is not to tack as many skins of victims as possible against the wall. His function is to vindicate the rights of the people as expressed in the laws and give those accused of crime a fair trial.
William O. Douglas
The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.
William O. Douglas
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.
William O. Douglas
The conscience of this nation is the Constitution.
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
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
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
Our upside down welfare state is socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor.
William O. Douglas
Hiking a ridge, a meadow, a river bottom, is as healthy a form of exercise as one can get.
William O. Douglas
Why cannot we work at cooperative schemes and search for the common ground binding all mankind together?
William O. Douglas
Those in power are blind devotees to private enterprise. They accept that degree of socialism implicit in the vast subsidies to the military-industrial-complex, but not that type of socialism which maintains public projects for the disemployed and the unemployed alike.
William O. Douglas
The one governmental agency that has no ambition.
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 First Amendment makes confidence in the common sense of our people and in the maturity of their judgement the great postulate of our democracy.
William O. Douglas
Racial discrimination against a white is as unconstitutional as race discrimination against a black.
William O. Douglas
The critical point is that the Constitution places the right of silence beyond the reach of government.
William O. Douglas
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
What a man thinks is no concern of the government.
William O. Douglas
