8 William O. Douglas Quotes on Constitution

William O. Douglas quotes on constitution

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

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

23. 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.

34. No patent medicine was ever put to wider and more varied use than the Fourteenth Amendment.

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

43. We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights-older than our political parties, older than our school system.

44. We do not sit as a superlegislature to weigh the wisdom of legislation.

46. When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional rights it acts lawlessly and the citizen can take matters into his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all.