William O. Douglas Quotes on Rights
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The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.
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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.
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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.
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The critical point is that the Constitution places the right of silence beyond the reach of government.
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The Constitution favors no racial group, no political or social group.
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The liberties of none are safe unless the liberties of all are protected.
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We must realize that today's Establishment is the New George III. Whether it will continue to adhere to his tactics, we do not know. If it does, the redress, honored in tradition, is also revolution.
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The struggle is always between the individual and his sacred right to express himself and the power structure that seeks conformity, suppression, and obedience.
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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.
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One who comes to the Court must come to adore, not to protest. That's the new gloss on the First Amendment.
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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.
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But our society - unlike most in the world - presuppose that freedom and liberty are in frame of reference that makes the individual, not the government, the keeper of his tastes, beliefs, and ideas. That is the philosophy of the First Amendment; and it is the article of faith that sets us apart from most nations in the world
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It is our attitude toward free thought and free expression that will determine our fate. There must be no limit on the range of temperate discussion, no limits on thought. No subject must be taboo. No censor must preside at our assemblies.
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The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.
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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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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.