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I learned early that the richness of life is found in adventure. Adventure calls on all the faculties of mind and spirit. It develops self-reliance and independence. Life then teems with excitement. But man is not ready for adventure unless he is rid of fear. For fear confines him and limits his scope. He stays tethered by strings of doubt and indecision and has only a small and narrow world to explore.
William O. Douglas -
The court is really the keeper of the conscience, and the conscience is the Constitution.
William O. Douglas
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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.
William O. Douglas -
We need be bold and adventuresome in our thinking in order to survive.
William O. Douglas -
Trees have judicial standing, and probably grass too.
William O. Douglas -
Literature should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor.
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 -
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.
William O. Douglas
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When a man knows how to live amid danger, he is not afraid to die. When he is not afraid to die, he is, strangely, free to live.
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 -
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 -
A road is a dagger placed in the heart of a wilderness.
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 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
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The First Amendment makes confidence in the common sense of our people and in the maturity of their judgement the great postulate of our democracy.
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 -
Our upside down welfare state is socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor.
William O. Douglas -
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 -
Racial discrimination against a white is as unconstitutional as race discrimination against a black.
William O. Douglas -
The interests of the corporation state are to convert all the riches of the earth into dollars.
William O. Douglas
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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.
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 -
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 -
Violence has no constitutional sanction; and every government from the beginning has moved against it. But where grievances pile high and most of the elected spokesmen represent the Establishment, violence may be the only effective response.
William O. Douglas