William O. Douglas Quotes About Liberty
-
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.
→ -
The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.
→ -
Realization of this need means adults must awaken to the urgency of the young people's unrest-in other words there must be created an adult unrest against the inequities and injustices in the present system. If the government is in jeopardy, it is not because we are unable to cope with revolutionary situations. Jeopardy means that either the leaders or the people do not realize they have all the tools required to make the revolution come true. The tools and the opportunity exist. Only the moral imagination is missing.
→ -
But our society - unlike most in the world - presupposes that freedom and liberty are in a frame of reference that makes the individual, not government, the keeper of his tastes, beliefs, and ideas. That is the philosophy of the First Amendment; and it is this article of faith that sets us apart from most nations in the world.
→ -
The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.
→ -
The liberties of none are safe unless the liberties of all are protected.
→ -
The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy arrest.
→ -
A people who extend civil liberties only to preferred groups start down the path either to dictatorship of the right or the left.
→ -
What we must remember, however, is that preservation of liberties does not depend on motives. A suppression of liberty has the same effect whether the suppressor be a reformer or an outlaw. The only protection against misguided zeal is constant alertness to infractions of the guarantees of liberty contained in our Constitution. Each surrender of liberty to the demands of the moment makes easier another, larger surrender. . .
→ -
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.
→ -
Among the liberties of citizens that are guaranteed are ... the right to believe what one chooses, the right to differ from his neighbor, the right to pick and choose the political philosophy he likes best, the right to associate with whomever he chooses, the right to join groups he prefers.
→ -
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.
→ -
A function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it invites a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it passes for acceptance of an idea.
→ -
Ideas are indeed the most dangerous weapons in the world. Our ideas of freedom are the most powerful political weapons man has ever forged.
→ -
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
- Born: October 16, 1898
- Died: January 19, 1980
- Occupation: Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Related Authors
-
Louis D. Brandeis Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
Wiley Blount Rutledge Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
John Marshall Harlan II Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
Felix Frankfurter Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
William J. Brennan Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
William Rehnquist Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
Robert H. Jackson Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
Warren E. Burger Former Chief Justice of the United States -
Frank Murphy Former Mayor of Detroit -
Fred M. Vinson Former United States Secretary of the Treasury -
Byron White Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
Harry A. Blackmun Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
Tom C. Clark Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
Harlan F. Stone Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
Earl Warren Former Chief Justice of the United States -
Potter Stewart Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
Stanley Forman Reed Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
Hugo Black Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States -
Abe Fortas Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Popular Topics
- Food Choices
- Apollo 11
- Disarray
- Mystery Of Life
- Unlucky
- Softness
- Chasing Dreams
- Sea Level Rise
- Bigger And Better
- Inspirational Romance
- Immediate Gratification
- Khomeini
- Keys To The Kingdom
- Ineffectiveness
- Healthy Self Esteem
- Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me
- Forsake
- Parabatai
- Great Times
- Unique Opportunities