William O. Douglas Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• Security can only be achieved through constant change, through discarding old ideas that have outlived their usefulness and adapting others to current facts.

  William O. Douglas

  Change, Ideas, Facts

  12 Copy quote

• Any test that turns on what is offensive to the community's standards is too loose, too capricious, too destructive of freedom of expression to be squared with the First Amendment. Under that test, juries can censor, suppress, and punish what they don't like, provided the matter relates to "sexual impurity" or has a tendency "to excite lustful thoughts." This is community censorship in one of its worst forms. It creates a regime where, in the battle between the literati and the Philistines, the Philistines are certain to win.

  William O. Douglas

  Winning, Expression, Community

  "Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. June 24, 1957.

  56 Copy quote

• The interests of the corporation state are to convert all the riches of the earth into dollars.

  William O. Douglas

  Dollars, Earth, Corporations

  WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS (1970). “POINTS OF REBELLION”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  People, Zoologist, City Planning

  15 Copy quote

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

  William O. Douglas

  Heart, Daggers, Wilderness

  5 Copy quote

• We need be bold and adventuresome in our thinking in order to survive.

  William O. Douglas

  Thinking, Order, Needs

  "Adler v. Board of Educ. of City of New York, 342 U.S. 485". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. March 3, 1952.

  4 Copy quote

• The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.

  William O. Douglas

  Religious, War, Political

  William O. Douglas (1954). “An Almanac of Liberty”

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  11 Copy quote

• 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.

  William O. Douglas

  Beautiful, Spiritual, Community

  7 Copy quote

• This freedom of movement is the very essence of our free society, setting us apart. Like the right of assembly and the right of association, it often makes all other rights meaningful-knowing, studying, arguing, exploring, conversing, observing and even thinking. Once the right to travel is curtailed, all other rights suffer, just as when curfew or home detention is placed on a person.

  William O. Douglas

  Meaningful, Home, Thinking

  34 Copy quote

• 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

  Thinking, America, People

  23 Copy quote

• 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.

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Compelling Reason, Race, Quality

  "DeFunis v. Odegaard, 416 U.S. 312". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. April 23, 1974.

  8 Copy quote

• One aspect of modern life which has gone far to stifle men is the rapid growth of tremendous corporations. Enormous spiritual sacrifices are made in the transformation of shopkeepers into employees... The disappearance of free enterprise has led to a submergence of the individual in the impersonal corporation in much the same manner as he has been submerged in the state in other lands.

  William O. Douglas

  Spiritual, Sacrifice, Men

  William O. Douglas' speech at annual dinner of Fordham University Alumni Association in New York City, February 9, 1939.

  17 Copy quote

• Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience (in this case, the judge or the jury) that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even for the same performance.

  William O. Douglas

  Yesterday, History, Democracy

  "Kingsley Books, Inc. v. Brown, 354 U.S. 436". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. June 24, 1957.

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Liberty, Citizens, Libertarian

  11 Copy quote

• No patent medicine was ever put to wider and more varied use than the Fourteenth Amendment.

  William O. Douglas

  Medicine, Patents, Use

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  William O. Douglas

  Mean, Opportunity, Government

  WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS (1970). “POINTS OF REBELLION”

  7 Copy quote

• Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order, to efficiency of operation, to scientific advancement and the like.

  William O. Douglas

  Brother, Powerful, World Government

  WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS (1970). “POINTS OF REBELLION”

  53 Copy quote

• 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

  Wall, Rights, Law

  35 Copy quote

• There is no superior person by constitutional standards. An applicant who is white is entitled to no advantage by reason of that fact, nor is he subject to any disability, no matter what his race or color. Whatever his race, an applicant has a constitutional right to have his application considered on its individual merits.

  William O. Douglas

  Race, Color, White

  4 Copy quote

• We have a system which, though far from perfect, is strong with idealism. It gives elbow room for men of all races and all beliefs. It is vital and dynamic. And it works. We have the means of shaping the world in our pattern. If we do, freedom will be assured for all men. The decision is in the hands of this generation. It is a challenge to our political competence. For Western civilization it is the greatest challenge of all time.

  William O. Douglas

  Strong, Mean, Men

  9 Copy quote

• Thus if the First Amendment means anything in this field, it must allow protests even against the moral code that the standard of the day sets for the community. In other words, literature should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor.

  William O. Douglas

  Mean, Community, Literature

  9 Copy quote

• Inanimate objects are sometimes parties to litigation. A ship has a legal personality, a fiction found useful for maritime purposes. The corporation sole - a creature of ecclesiastical law - is an acceptable adversary, and large fortunes ride on its cases... So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life.

  William O. Douglas

  Party, Technology, Air

  "Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. April 19, 1972.

  4 Copy quote

• I have the same confidence in the ability of our people to reject noxious literature as I have in their capacity to sort out the true from the false in theology, economics, or any other field.

  William O. Douglas

  People, Literature, Fields

  4 Copy quote

Page 3 of 6

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin