Quotes by William O. Douglas

“Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

“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 defea”

“As nightfall does not come 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 ...”

“The American government is premised on the theory that if the individual man is to be free, his ideas, his beliefs, his ideology, his philosophy, must be placed beyond the reach of government.”

“Once the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publications, the free press as we know it disappears. Then the spectre of a government agent will look over the sho...”

“These examples and many others demonstrate an alarming trend whereby the privacy and dignity of our citizens is being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step m...”

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

“We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.”

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

“One who comes to the Court must come to adore, not to protest. That's the new gloss on the 1st Amendment.”

“Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred.”

“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.”

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

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

“Common sense often makes good law.”

“Security can only be achieved through constant change through discarding old ideas that have outlived their usefulness and adapting others to current facts.”

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

“Security can only be achieved through constant change through discarding old ideas that have outlived their usefulness and adapting others to current facts.”

“The whole, though larger than any of its parts, does not necessarily obscure their separate identities.”

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