William O. Douglas: Trending quotes

“Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience … that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even for the same performance.”

William O. Douglas

Dissenting, Kingsley Books, Inc. v. Brown, 354 U.S. 436, 447 (1957)
Judicial opinions

Disease

“When man was first in the jungle, he took care of himself. When he entered a societal group, controls were necessarily imposed. But our society -- unlike most in the world -- presupposes that freedom and liberty are in a frame of reference that makes the individual, not 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.”

William O. Douglas

Dissenting, Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U.S. 49 (1972)
Judicial opinions

World , Faith , Idea , Freedom

“As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air — however slight — lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.”

William O. Douglas

Letter to Young Lawyers Section of the Washington State Bar Association (10 September 1976), The Douglas Letters : Selections from the Private Papers of Justice William O. Douglas (1987), edited by Melvin I. Urofsky and Philip E. Urofsky, p. 162
Other speeches and writings

Change

“The liberties of none are safe unless the liberties of all are protected.”

William O. Douglas

A Living Bill of Rights (1961), p. 64
Other speeches and writings

“When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional right to free speech, it acts lawlessly; and the citizen can take matters in his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all.”

William O. Douglas

Dissenting, Poulos v. New Hampshire, 345 U.S. 395 (1953)
Judicial opinions

Law , Exercises

“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

An Almanac of Liberty (1954), p. 238
Other speeches and writings

Men

“One who comes to the Court must come to adore, not to protest. That's the new gloss on the First Amendment, Potter.”

William O. Douglas

Statement to Justice Potter Stewart on the arrest of peacefully protesting Vietnam War veterans on steps of the Supreme Court, in The Court Years, 1939-1975: The Autobiography of William O. Douglas‎ (1981), p. 234
Other speeches and writings

“The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.”

William O. Douglas

An Almanac of Liberty (1954), p. 107
Other speeches and writings

History

“Religious experiences which are as real as life to some may be incomprehensible to others.”

William O. Douglas

United States v. Ballard, 322 U.S. 78 (1944)
Judicial opinions

Life

“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.”

William O. Douglas

"The One Un-American Act," Speech to the Author's Guild Council in New York, on receiving the 1951 Lauterbach Award (December 3, 1952) http://ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/oif/foryoungpeople/theoneunamerican/oneunamerican.cfm
Other speeches and writings