William O. Douglas - Power Quotes

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Men need to know the elemental challenges that sea and mountains present. They need to know what it is to be alive and to survive when great storms come. They need to unlock the secrets of streams, lakes, and canyons and to find how these treasures are veritable storehouses of inspiration. They must experience the sense of mastery of adversity. They must find a peak or a ridge that they can reach under their own power alone.

William O. Douglas
The struggle is always between the individual and his sacred right to express himself and the power structure that seeks conformity, suppression, and obedience.

William O. Douglas
All executive power – from the reign of ancient kings to the rule of modern dictators – has the outward appearance of efficiency.

William O. Douglas
The concept of the public welfare is broad and inclusive... the values it represents are spiritual as well as physical, aesthetic as well as monetary. It is within the power of the legislature to determine that the community should be beautiful as well as healthy, spacious as well as clean, well balanced as well as carefully patroled.

William O. Douglas
The Court's great power is its ability to educate, to provide moral leadership.

William O. Douglas
Power that controls the economy should be in the hands of elected representatives of the people instead of an industrial oligarchy

William O. Douglas
The censor is always quick to justify his function in terms that are protective of society. But the First Amendment, written in terms that are absolute, deprives the States of any power to pass on the value, the propriety, or the morality of a particular expression.

William O. Douglas
Those in power are blind devotees to private enterprise. They accept that degree of socialism implicit in the vast subsidies to the military-industrial-complex, but not that type of socialism which maintains public projects for the disemployed and the unemployed alike.

William O. Douglas