William O. Douglas

The 5th Amendment is an old friend and a good friend. one of the great landmarks in men's struggle to be free of tyranny, to be decent and civilized.

— William O. Douglas

Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred.

— William O. Douglas

As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such a twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air - however slight - lest we become unwitting victims of darkness.

— William O. Douglas

Common sense often makes good law.

— William O. Douglas

The 5th Amendment is an old friend and a good friend. one of the great landmarks in men's struggle to be free of tyranny, to be decent and civilized.

— William O. Douglas

The whole, though larger than any of its parts, does not necessarily obscure their separate identities.

— William O. Douglas

Religious experiences which are as real as life to some may be incomprehensible to others.

— William O. Douglas

A function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purposes when it induces 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 presses for acceptance of an idea.

— 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

The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedoms.

— William O. Douglas

Our recent decisions make plain that we do not sit as a super-legislature to weigh the wisdom of legislation nor to decide whether the policy which it expresses offends the public welfare.

— William O. Douglas

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

— William O. Douglas

The 5th Amendment is an old friend and a good friend. one of the great landmarks in men's struggle to be free of tyranny, to be decent and civilized.

— William O. Douglas

We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.

— William O. Douglas

The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.

— William O. Douglas

Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred.

— William O. Douglas

All executive power – from the reign of ancient kings to the rule of modern dictators – has the outward appearance of efficiency.

— William O. Douglas

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 in his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all.

— William O. Douglas

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

The critical point is that the Constitution places the right of silence beyond the reach of government.

— William O. Douglas

Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience … that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even for the same performance.

— William O. Douglas

That seems to us to be the common sense of the matter; and common sense often makes good law.

— William O. Douglas

Literature should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor.

— William O. Douglas

The Constitution favors no racial group, no political or social group.

— William O. Douglas

The conception of political equality from the Declaration of Independence, to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, to the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth Amendments could mean only one thing — one person, one vote.

— William O. Douglas

We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights -- older than our political parties, older than our school system. Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that 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 our prior decisions.

— William O. Douglas

We are rapidly entering the age of no privacy, where everyone is open to surveillance at all times; where there are no secrets from government.

— William O. Douglas

These examples and many others demonstrate an alarming trend whereby the privacy and dignity of our citizens is being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen -- a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of man's life at will.

— William O. Douglas

When man was first in the jungle, he took care of himself. When he entered a societal group, controls were necessarily imposed. 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 the article of faith that sets us apart from most nations in the world.

— William O. Douglas

For there is no constitutional right for any race to be preferred... 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

The purpose of the University of Washington cannot be to produce black lawyers for blacks, Polish lawyers for Poles, Jewish lawyers for Jews, Irish lawyers for Irish. It should be to produce good lawyers for Americans and not to place First Amendment barriers against anyone.

— William O. Douglas

The rules when the giants play are the same as when the pygmies enter the market.

— William O. Douglas

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

The law is not a series of calculating machines where answers come tumbling out when the right levers are pushed.

— William O. Douglas

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

It is our attitude toward free thought and free expression that will determine our fate. There must be no limit on the range of temperate discussion, no limits on thought. No subject must be taboo. No censor must preside at our assemblies. We need all the ingenuity we possess to avert the holocaust.

— William O. Douglas

The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.

— William O. Douglas

The Fifth Amendment is an old friend and a good friend, one of the great landmarks in men's struggle to be free of tyranny, to be decent and civilized.

— William O. Douglas

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.

— William O. Douglas

The liberties of none are safe unless the liberties of all are protected.

— William O. Douglas

The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.

— William O. Douglas

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

I've often thought that if our zoning boards could be put in charge of botanists, of zoologists and 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 must realize that today's Establishment is the New George III. Whether it will continue to adhere to his tactics, we do not know. If it does, the redress, honored in tradition, is also revolution.

— William O. Douglas

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

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

The Court's great power is its ability to educate, to provide moral leadership.

— William O. Douglas

The struggle is always between the individual and his sacred right to express himself and the power structure that seeks conformity, suppression, and obedience.

— William O. Douglas

The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedoms.

— William O. Douglas

It seemed to me that I had barely reached the Court when people were trying to get me off.

— William O. Douglas

The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.

— William O. Douglas

Tell the FBI that the kidnappers should pick out a judge that Nixon wants back.

— William O. Douglas

One who comes to the Court must come to adore, not to protest. That's the new gloss on the First Amendment, Potter.

— William O. Douglas

As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air — however slight — lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.

— William O. Douglas