The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom. — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
A people who extend civil liberties only to preferred groups start down the path either to dictatorship of the right or the… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
It is better, so the Fourth Amendment teaches us, that the guilty sometimes go free than the citizens be subject to easy… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
The right to dissent is the only thing that makes life tolerable for a judge of an appellate court... the affairs of… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
The first opinion the Court ever filed has a dissenting opinion. Dissent is a tradition of this Court... When someone is writing… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
“Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional right to free speech, it acts lawlessly; and the citizen… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional rights it acts lawlessly and the citizen can take matters… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
The right to work, I had assumed, was the most precious liberty that man possesses. Man has indeed as much right to… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
Ideas are indeed the most dangerous weapons in the world. Our ideas of freedom are the most powerful political weapons man has… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
Among the liberties of citizens that are guaranteed are ... the right to believe what one chooses, the right to differ from… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
The challenge to our liberties comes frequently not from those who consciously seek to destroy our system of government, but from men… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
What we must remember, however, is that preservation of liberties does not depend on motives. A suppression of liberty has the same… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
“Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
But our society - unlike most in the world - presupposes that freedom and liberty are in a frame of reference that… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
A function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
“The framers of the constitution knew human nature as well as we do. They too had lived in dangerous days; they too… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
The framers of the constitution knew human nature as well as we do. They too had lived in dangerous days; they too… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
Realization of this need means adults must awaken to the urgency of the young people's unrest-in other words there must be created… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
“Once the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publications, the free press as we know… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
“These examples and many others demonstrate an alarming trend whereby the privacy and dignity of our citizens is being whittled away by… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
The First Amendment makes confidence in the common sense of our people and in the maturity of their judgement the great postulate of our… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
Inanimate objects are sometimes parties to litigation. A ship has a legal personality, a fiction found useful for maritime purposes. The corporation sole -… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
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… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
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… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
I have the same confidence in the ability of our people to reject noxious literature as I have in their capacity to sort out… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
The liberties of none are safe unless the liberties of all are protected. — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
A function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
At the constitutional level where we work, 90 percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
To be whole and harmonious, man must also know the music of the beaches and the woods. He must find the thing of which… — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights-older than our political parties, older than our school system. — William O. Douglas Copy Share Image
![“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 [...] and the like.” quote by William O. Douglas](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/18a/william-o-douglas-2931_control_big-brother-in-the-form-of-an-increasing_2127861.jpg)
![“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." [ The One Un-American Act , Speech to the Author's Guild Council in New York, on receiving the 1951 Lauterbach Award (December 3, 1952)]” quote by William O. Douglas](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/2ab/william-o-douglas-2931_democracy_restriction-of-free-thought-and-free-spe_550325.jpg)
