William O. Douglas Quotes
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Our upside down welfare state is socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor.
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The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.
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I hope to be remembered as someone who made the earth a little more beautiful.
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The thrill of tramping alone and unafraid through a wilderness of lakes, creeks, alpine meadows, and glaciers is not known to many. A civilization can be built around the machine but it is doubtful that a meaningful life can be produced by it.... When man worships at the feet of avalas creations. When he feels the wind blowing through him on a high peak or sleeps under a closely matted white bark pine in an exposed basin, he is apt to find his relationship to the universe.
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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.
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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.
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To be whole and harmonious, man must also know the music of the beaches and the woods. He must find the thing of which he is only an infinitesimal part and nurture it and love it, if he is to live.
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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.
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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. . .
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The court is really the keeper of the conscience, and the conscience is the Constitution.
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A road is a dagger placed in the heart of a wilderness.
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The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.
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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.
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Racial discrimination against a white is as unconstitutional as race discrimination against a black.
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Literature should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor.
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I do not know of any salvation for society except through eccentrics, misfits, dissenters, people who protest.
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The day should come when all of the forms of life... will stand before the court - the pileated woodpecker as well as the coyote and bear, the lemmings as well as the trout in the streams.
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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.
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As night-fall does not come at once, neither does oppression...It is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air - however slight - lest we become victims of the darkness.
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We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights-older than our political parties, older than our school system.
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The liberties of none are safe unless the liberties of all are protected.
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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.
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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.
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The Free Exercise Clause protects the individual from any coercive measure that encourages him toward one faith or creed, discourages him from another, or makes it prudent or desirable for him to select one and embrace it.