William O. Douglas quotes - page 3

All executive power – from the reign of ancient kings to the rule of modern dictators – has the outward appearance of efficiency. (William O. Douglas)
At the constitutional level where we work, 90 percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections. View quote
William O. Douglas
The association 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 any prior decisions. View quote
William O. Douglas
No patent medicine was ever put to wider and more varied use than the Fourteenth Amendment. View quote
William O. Douglas
Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us? View quote
William O. Douglas
We who have the final word can speak softly or angrily. We can seek to challenge and annoy, as we need not stay docile and quiet. View quote
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. View quote
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. View quote
William O. Douglas
We do not sit as a superlegislature to weigh the wisdom of legislation. View quote
William O. Douglas
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. View quote
William O. Douglas
Once the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publication, the free press as we know it disappears. Then the spectre of a government agent will look over the shoulder of everyone who reads. ... Fear of criticism goes with every person into the bookstall. The subtle, imponderable pressures of the orthodox lay hold. Some will fear to read what is unpopular, what the powers-that-be dislike. ... fear will take the place of freedom in the libraries, book stores, and homes in the land." (William O. Douglas)
Those in power need checks and restraints lest they come to identify the common good for their own tastes and desires, and their continuation in office as essential to the preservation of the nation. View quote
William O. Douglas
At the international level we have become virtually paranoid. The world is filled with dangerous people. Every troublemaker across the globe is a communist. Our obsession is in part the product of a fear generated by Joseph McCarthy. Indeed a black silence of fear possesses the nation and is causing us to jettison some of our libertarian traditions. View quote
William O. Douglas
A person may be convicted for making a speech or for pamphleteering if a judge rules ex post facto that the speaker or publisher created a ‘clear and present danger' that his forbidden or revolutionary thesis would be accepted by a least some of the audience. View quote
William O. Douglas
A man's belief is his own; he is the keeper of his conscience; Big Brother has no rightful concern in these areas. View quote
William O. Douglas
Electronic surveillance, as well as old-fashioned wire tapping, has brought Big Brother closer to everyone and has produced a like leveling effect... But the Administration soon broadened that category to include domestic groups who attempt to use unlawful means to ‘attack the existing structure of government.' The Wall Street Journal sounded the alarm that such board surveillance ‘could lead to the harassment of lawful dissenters.' View quote
William O. Douglas
Yet more and more of the youth of America are instinctively horrified at the way President Johnson avoided all constitutional procedures and slyly maneuvered us into an Asian war. There was no national debate over a declaration of war. The lies and half-truths that were told, and the phony excuses gradually advanced, made most Americans dubious of the integrity of our leadership. View quote
William O. Douglas
There always have been-and always will be-aggrieved persons. The lower their estate the more difficult it is to find a right to fit the wrong being done. Part of our problem starts at that point. In New York City a housing complaint must go to one of the nineteen bureaus that deal with those problems. It takes a sharp and energetic layman or lawyer to find the proper desk in the bureaucracy where the complaint must be lodged. View quote
William O. Douglas
The federal food program is not responsive to that growing need. It is designed by the agro-business lobby to restrict production, keep prices high, and assure profits to the producers. That lobby controls the Department of Agriculture, which as a result has made feeding the poor a subordinate and secondary function. View quote
William O. Douglas