William O. Douglas Quotes

There are social restrictions where someone could be suppressing someone else's freedom to express themselves.

Some people still believe you should just fall in line with what's going on - and that's scary. It makes a mockery of freedom of speech.

Only the suppressed word is dangerous.

when one is not expressing himself, he is not free. thus, he begins to struggle and the struggle breeds methodical routine. Soon, he is doing his methodical routine as response rather than responding to what is.

The right to freedom of expression is justified first of all as the right of an individual purely in his capacity as an individual. It derives from the widely accepted premise of Western thought that the proper end of man is the realization of his character and potentialities as a human being.

The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.

We should all have the opportunity to express what we want to express.

Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.

Reduced to its lowest terms, the great struggle which now rocks the whole earth more and more takes on the character of a struggle of the individual versus the state.

Censorship always defeats it own purpose, for it creates in the end the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.

I've never been any good with authority.

There are those who dance to the rhythm that is played to them, those who only dance to their own rhythm, and those who don't dance at all.

I want to live perfectly above the law, and make it my servant instead of my master.

The only way of living in a free society is to feel that you have the right to say and do stuff.

Unless you hit your television with a sledgehammer, you're not going to be able to be an individual.

By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes to be his duty against the influences of authority and majorities, custom and opinion.

You cannot control a free society by force.

Suppressing ideas never makes them go away.

In an over-organized society, the individual is altogether crushed out of existence. He gains the whole wealth of social thought around him and loses his own soul.

We gradually become aware that we live in an environment where there is constant tension between authority and freedom.

I think there are ways in which we censor ourselves; that's the most dangerous kind of censorship - that's how hegemony works.

From childhood, we're trained to be a certain way, to behave a certain way - so that the power base can control us, really. And punk and drag are completely outside of that.

I have a free voice. I have a free mind. I have freedom of expression.

One of the guiding beliefs of our consuming age is that we are all free and independent individuals. That we can choose to do pretty much what we want, and if we can't, then it's bad. But at the same time, co-existing alongside this, there is a completely different, parallel universe where we all seem meekly to do what those in power tell us to do.

Liberty is the very last idea that seems to occur to anybody, in considering any political or social proposal. It is only necessary for anybody for any reason to allege any evidence of any evil in any human practice, for people instantly to suggest that the practice should be suppressed by the police.