William O. Douglas Quotes About Freedom Of Speech

Quotes about: Freedom Of Speech

• Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.

  William O. Douglas

  Teaching, Rights In America, Political Revolution

  "The One Un-American Act". William O. Douglas' speech to the Author's Guild Council in New York on receiving the 1951 Lauterbach Award, December 3, 1952.

• The dominant purpose of the First Amendment was to prohibit the widespread practice of government suppression of embarrassing information.

  William O. Douglas

  Government, Practice, Freedom Of Speech

• 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

  Graduation, Essence, Academic Freedom

• 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

  Mean, Order, Law

• The people, the ultimate governors, must have absolute freedom of, and therefore privacy of, their individual opinions and beliefs regardless of how suspect or strange they may appear to others. Ancillary to that principle is the conclusion that an individual must also have absolute privacy over whatever information he may generate in the course of testing his opinions and beliefs.

  William O. Douglas

  People, Freedom Of Speech, Principles

  "Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. June 29, 1972.

• 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

  Expression, Freedom Of Speech, Firsts

  "Memoirs v. Massachusetts, 383 U.S. 413". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. March 21, 1966.

• Effective self-government cannot succeed unless the people are immersed in a steady, robust, unimpeded, and uncensored flow of opinion and reporting which are continuously subjected to critique, rebuttal, and reexamination.

  William O. Douglas

  Government, Self, People

  "Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. June 29, 1972.

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