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William O. Douglas
73 quotes
“But the case against the university is that it is chiefly a handmaiden of the state or of industry or, worse yet, of the military-industrial complex.”
William O. Douglas (1898–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When the university does not sit apart, critical of industry, the Pentagon, and government, there is no fermentative force at work in our society. The university becomes a collection of technicians in a service station, trying to turn out better technocrats for the technological society. Then all voices become a chorus supporting the status quo; there is no challenger from the opposition warning of dangers to come.”
William O. Douglas (1898–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man's belief is his own; he is the keeper of his conscience; Big Brother has no rightful concern in these areas.”
William O. Douglas (1898–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ideological data—like personality data—is treacherous when fed into a computer. For by its use the loyalty and security board’s failure or refusal to clear a person becomes a virtually incontestable ‘fact.’ All one has to do now is to press the ‘subversive’ button and all the names of ‘dangerous’ people come tumbling out.”
William O. Douglas (1898–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 operations, to scientific advancement, and the like. The cause of privacy will be won or lost essentially in legislative halls and in constitutional assemblies. If it is won, this pluralistic society of ours will experience a spiritual renewal. If it is lost we will have written our own prescription for mediocrity and conformity.”
William O. Douglas (1898–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.’”
William O. Douglas (1898–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is more knowledge and information than ever before: the experts have so multiplied that man has a new sense of importance; man is indeed about to be delivered over to them. 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.”
William O. Douglas (1898–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1898–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
William O. Douglas (1898–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the war that comes is a nuclear conflict, the end of planetary life is probable. If it is a war with conventional weapons, bankruptcy is inevitable. Modern technological war is much too expensive to fight. Vietnam has bled our country at the rate of 2.5 billion dollars a month.”
William O. Douglas (1898–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are witnessing, I think, a new American phenomenon. The two parties have become almost indistinguishable; and each is controlled by the Establishment.”
William O. Douglas (1898–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
William O. Douglas (1898–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our militarism threatens to become more and more the dominant force in our lives. This is an inflammatory issue; and dissent on it will not be stilled.”
William O. Douglas (1898–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I believe it was Charles Adams who described our upside down welfare state as ‘socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor.’ The great welfare scandal of the age concerns the dole we give rich people.”
William O. Douglas (1898–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
William O. Douglas (1898–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
William O. Douglas (1898–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have here the problem of bigness. Its lesson should by now have been burned into our memory by Brandeis. The Curse of Bigness' shows how size can become a menace – both industrial and social. It can be an industrial menace because it creates gross inequalities against existing or putative competitors. It can be a social menace – because of its control of prices. Control of prices in the steel industry is powerful leverage on our economy. For the price of steel determines the price of hundreds of other articles. Our price level determines in large measure whether we have prosperity or depression – an economy of abundance or scarcity. Size in steel should therefore be jealously watched. In final analysis, size in steel is the measure of the power of a handful of men over our economy. That power can be utilized with lightning speed. It can be benign or it can be dangerous. The philosophy of the Sherman Act is that it should not exist. For all power tends to develop into a government in itself. Power that controls the economy should be in the hands of elected representatives of the people, not in the hands of an industrial oligarchy. Industrial power should be decentralized. It should be scattered into many hands so that the fortunes of the people will not be dependent on the whim or caprice, the political prejudices, the emotional stability of a few self-appointed men. The fact that they are not vicious men but respectable and social minded is irrelevant. That is the philosophy and the command of the Sherman Act. It is founded on a theory of hostility to the concentration in private hands of power so great that only a government of the people should have it.”
William O. Douglas (1898–1980) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dissenting, United States v. Columbia Steel Co., 334 U.S. 495 (1948).
“The vitality of civil and political institutions in our society depends on free discussion. As Chief Justice Hughes wrote in De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353, 365, 260, it is only through free debate and free exchange of ideas that government remains responsive to the will of the people and peaceful change is effected. The right to speak freely and to promote diversity of ideas and programs is therefore one of the chief distinctions that sets us apart from totalitarian regimes. Accordingly a function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea. That is why freedom of speech, though not absolute, Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, supra, 315 U.S. at pages 571-572, 62 S.Ct. at page 769, is nevertheless protected against censorship or punishment, unless shown likely to produce a clear and present danger of a serious substantive evil that rises far above public inconvenience, annoyance, or unrest. See Bridges v. California, 314 U.S. 252, 262, 193, 159 A.L.R. 1346; Craig v. Harney, 331 U.S. 367, 373, 1253. There is no room under our Constitution for a more restrictive view. For the alternative would lead to standardization of ideas either by legislatures, courts, or dominant political or community groups.Terminiello, 337 U.S. at 4-5.”
William O. Douglas (1898–1980) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Majority opinion, Terminiello v. City of Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 (1949) at 4-5.
“* The Congress, as well as the President, is trustee of the national welfare. The President can act more quickly than the Congress. The President with the armed services at his disposal can move with force as well as with speed. All executive power — from the reign of ancient kings to the rule of modern dictators — has the outward appearance of efficiency. Legislative power, by contrast, is slower to exercise. There must be delay while the ponderous machinery of committees, hearings, and debates is put into motion. That takes time; and while the Congress slowly moves into action, the emergency may take its toll in wages, consumer goods, war production, the standard of living of the people, and perhaps even lives. Legislative action may indeed often be cumbersome, time-consuming, and apparently inefficient. But as [[Louis Brandeis|Mr. Justice Brandeis] stated in his dissent in Myers v. United States, 272 U. S. 52, 293:”
William O. Douglas (1898–1980) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Concurring, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952).
“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 (1898–1980) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dissenting, Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727 (1972).
“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 (1898–1980) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dissenting, Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727 (1972).
“He was, however, speaking to a representative of government, the police. And it is to government that one goes 'for a redress of grievances,' to use an almost forgotten phrase of the First Amendment. But it is said that the purpose was 'to cause inconvenience and annoyance.' Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us? The constitutional theory is that we the people are the sovereigns, the state and federal officials only our agents. 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.”
William O. Douglas (1898–1980) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dissenting, Colten v. Kentucky, 407 U.S. 104 (1972).
“This case involves a cancer in our body politic. It is a measure of the disease which afflicts us. Army surveillance, like Army regimentation, is at war with the principles of the First Amendment. Those who already walk submissively will say there is no cause for alarm. But submissiveness is not our heritage. The First Amendment was designed to allow rebellion to remain as our heritage. The Constitution was designed to keep government off the backs of the people. The Bill of Rights was added to keep the precincts of belief and expression, of the press, of political and social activities free from surveillance. The Bill of Rights was designed to keep agents of government and official eavesdroppers away from assemblies of people. The aim was to allow men to be free and independent and to assert their rights against government. There can be no influence more paralyzing of that objective than Army surveillance. When an intelligence officer looks over every nonconformist's shoulder in the library, or walks invisibly by his side in a picket line, or infiltrates his club, the America once extolled as the voice of liberty heard around the world no longer is cast in the image which Jefferson and Madison designed, but more in the Russian image.”
William O. Douglas (1898–1980) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Laird v. Tatum, 408 U.S. 1 (1972), dissenting.