William O. Douglas: Trending quotes

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William O. Douglas: 104 quotes0 likes

“Tell the FBI that the kidnappers should pick out a judge that Nixon wants back.”

William O. Douglas

The Court Years, 1939-1975: The Autobiography of William O. Douglas (1980), p. 232
Other speeches and writings

“The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.”

William O. Douglas

Dissenting, Public utilities Commission v. Pollak, 343 U.S. 451, 467 (1952)
Judicial opinions

“The rules when the giants play are the same as when the pygmies enter the market.”

William O. Douglas

Dissenting, Scherk v. Alberto-Culver Co., 417 U.S. 506, 526 (1974)
Judicial opinions

“I've often thought that if our zoning boards could be put in charge of botanists, of zoologists and geologists, and people who know about the earth, we would have much more wisdom in such planning than we have when we leave it to the engineers.”

William O. Douglas

Remarks at conference sponsored by the American Histadrut Cultural Exchange Institute, Harriman, New York (February 17–19, 1967); reported in Judd L. Teller, ed., Government and the Democratic Process; A Symposium by American and Israeli Experts (1969), p. 16
Other speeches and writings

“We are rapidly entering the age of no privacy, where everyone is open to surveillance at all times; where there are no secrets from government.”

William O. Douglas

Dissenting, Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 341 (1966)
Judicial opinions

“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.”

William O. Douglas

Writing for the court, Gray v. Sanders, 372 U.S. 368, 381 (1963)
Judicial opinions

“That seems to us to be the common sense of the matter; and common sense often makes good law.”

William O. Douglas

Writing for the court, Peak v. United States, 353 U.S. 43 (1957)
Judicial opinions

“It seemed to me that I had barely reached the Court when people were trying to get me off.”

William O. Douglas

The Court years, 1939-1975: The Autobiography of William O. Douglas‎ (1980), p. 3
Other speeches and writings

“The way to combat noxious ideas is with other ideas. The way to combat falsehoods is with truth.”

William O. Douglas

Mike Wallace interview (4 November 1958), quoted in The Great Quotations (1966) by George Seldes
Other speeches and writings

“The purpose of the University of Washington cannot be to produce black lawyers for blacks, Polish lawyers for Poles, Jewish lawyers for Jews, Irish lawyers for Irish. It should be to produce good lawyers for Americans and not to place First Amendment barriers against anyone.”

William O. Douglas

Dissenting, DeFunis v. Odegaard, 416 U.S. 342 (1974)
Judicial opinions

“Man is about to be an automaton; he is identifiable only in the computer. As a person of worth and creativity, as a being with an infinite potential, he retreats and battles the forces that make him inhuman.
The dissent we witness is a reaffirmation of faith in man; it is protest against living under rules and prejudices and attitudes that produce the extremes of wealth and poverty and that make us dedicated to the destruction of people through arms, bombs, and gases, and that prepare us to think alike and be submissive objects for the regime of the computer.”

William O. Douglas

Points of Rebellion (1970), p. 32–33
Other speeches and writings

“The critical question of "standing" would be simplified and also put neatly in focus if we fashioned a federal rule that allowed environmental issues to be litigated before federal agencies or federal courts in the name of the inanimate object about to be despoiled, defaced, or invaded by roads and bulldozers and where injury is the subject of public outrage. Contemporary public concern for protecting nature's ecological equilibrium should lead to the conferral of standing upon environmental objects to sue for their own preservation. This suit would therefore be more properly labeled as Mineral King v. Morton.”

William O. Douglas

Dissenting, Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727 (1972)
Often referred to as Douglas' "trees have standing" case.
Judicial opinions

“One aspect of modern life which has gone far to stifle men is the rapid growth of tremendous corporations. Enormous spiritual sacrifices are made in the transformation of shopkeepers into employees… The disappearance of free enterprise has led to a submergence of the individual in the impersonal corporation in much the same manner as he has been submerged in the state in other lands.”

William O. Douglas

Speech at annual dinner of Fordham University Alumni Association, New York City (February 9, 1939), reported in James Allen, Democracy and Finance (1940, reprinted 1969), p. 291. This was Douglas's last speech as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission before his appointment to the Supreme Court.
Other speeches and writings

“Inanimate objects are sometimes parties in litigation. A ship has a legal personality, a fiction found useful for maritime purposes. The corporation sole – a creature of ecclesiastical law – is an acceptable adversary and large fortunes ride on its cases…. So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life. The river, for example, is the living symbol of all the life it sustains or nourishes – fish, aquatic insects, water ouzels, otter, fisher, deer, elk, bear, and all other animals, including man, who are dependent on it or who enjoy it for its sight, its sound, or its life. The river as plaintiff speaks for the ecological unit of life that is part of it.”

William O. Douglas

Dissenting, Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727 (1972)
Judicial opinions

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

William O. Douglas

The Court years, 1939-1975: The Autobiography of William O. Douglas‎ (1980), p. 8
Other speeches and writings

“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. We need all the ingenuity we possess to avert the holocaust.”

William O. Douglas

"The One Un-American Act," Speech to the Author's Guild Council in New York, on receiving the 1951 Lauterbach Award
Other speeches and writings

“We need to be bold and adventurous in our thinking in order to survive.”

William O. Douglas

Dissenting, Adler v. Board of Education of City of New York, 342 U.S. 511 (1952)
Judicial opinions