William O. Douglas Quotes

If the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech and press is to mean anything, it must allow protests even against the moral code that the standard of the day sets for the community.

As to the media, they are protected by the First Amendment, as they should be.

Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.

If you don't think a television news show represents the truth, you can turn off your TV. If you don't think a magazine represents the truth, you can cancel your subscription. You have the right to expose yourself to whatever information you want. But to have the government prescribing what the truth is or limiting the information available for the citizen is contrary to the 1st Amendment.

The danger of unbounded liberty [of printing], and the danger of bounding it, have produced a problem in the science of Government, which human understanding seems hitherto unable to solve.

If the 1st Amendment means anything, it means that the state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch.

If you care for the quality of life in our American democracy, then you have to be for censorship.

If one seeks to disseminate his ideas by means of periodicals or pamphlets, the post-office officials may decline to transmit anything that does not suit their taste; and the courts have decided that the United States post-office has precisely the same right to refuse to carry The Masses that it has to exclude sulfuric acid and dynamite from the mails.

Prior restraints on speech and publication are the most serious and least tolerable infringement on First Amendment Rights.

Political speech is indispensable to decision-making in a democracy, and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation. By taking the right to speak from some and giving it to others, the Government deprives the disadvantaged person or class of the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker’s voice. The Government may not by these means deprive the public of the right and privilege to determine for itself what speech and speakers are worthy of consideration. The First Amendment protects speech and speaker, and the ideas that flow from each.

Speech is an essential mechanism of democracy, for it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people. [...] The right of citizens to inquire, to hear, to speak, and to use information to reach consensus is a precondition to enlightened self-government and a necessary means to protect it. [...] By taking the right to speak from some and giving it to others, the Government deprives the disadvantaged person or class of the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker’s voice. The Government may not by these means deprive the public of the right and privilege to determine for itself what speech and speakers are worthy of consideration. The First Amendment protects speech and speaker, and the ideas that flow from each.

I am still against any kind of censorship. It's a subject in my life that has been very important.

I think that, as Americans, we should never forget that when we tamper with freedom of speech, it is a very sensitive issue that affects all of our constitutional rights and privileges.

Free speech rights means that government officials are barred from creating lists of approved and disapproved political ideas and then using the power of the state to enforce those preferences.

We need to defend absolutely the freedom of speech.

Do we really want the FCC to conduct investigations and issue warnings to radio talk show hosts nationwide who simply discuss the important issues of our time? The Constitution says 'freedom of speech,' not 'freedom of government-approved fair speech in rationed amounts.'

I find it very offensive when the government tells me what I can and cannot watch. Censor yourself.

I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat.

The ministry of interior may censor newspapers and ban them if they include anything that violates public security, threatens national unity, or contradicts Islam.

No man, who is depending purely upon the words of the Constitution, will ever say that we have unabridged freedom of speech and press so long as there is any law which prescribes a penalty for the utterance of anyone's sentiments …

A free press stands as one of the great interpreters between the government and the people. To allow it to be fettered is to fetter ourselves.

How do we protect free speech, when it may well be seen by the majority of the population as something that undermines the “just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare…? Legislating against free speech is always dangerous. Worse, in some countries and contexts, lawsuits have been used to harass those who hold dissenting or contrarian views.

If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.

When Government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought. This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.

The freedom of speech and the freedom of press, it's just precious man, it really is.