Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [341-360] of 1320 Freedom quotesFreedom QuotesFreedom Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes The privacy and dignity of our citizens [are] being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen -- a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a [person’s] life.~ Justice William O. Douglas A people who extend civil liberties only to preferred groups start down the path either to dictatorship of the right or the left.~ Justice William O. Douglas The Fifth Amendment is an old friend and a good friend. It is one of the great landmarks in men’s struggle to be free of tyranny, to be decent and civilized.~ Justice William O. Douglas The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.~ Justice William O. Douglas The function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it invites 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 passes for acceptance of an idea.~ Justice William O. Douglas The First and Fourteenth Amendments say that Congress and the States shall make “no law” which abridges freedom of speech or of the press. In order to sanction a system of censorship I would have to say that “no law” does not mean what it says, that “no law” is qualified to mean “some” laws. I cannot take this step.~ William O. Douglas Ideas are indeed the most dangerous weapons in the world. Our ideas of freedom are the most powerful political weapons man has ever forged.~ William O. Douglas Where suspicion fills the air and holds scholars in line for fear of their jobs, there can be no exercise of the free intellect. Supineness and dogmatism take the place of inquiry. A problem can no longer be pursued to its edges. Fear stalks the classroom. The teacher is no longer a stimulant to adventurous thinking; she becomes instead a pipe line for safe and sound information. A deadening dogma takes the place of free inquiry. Instruction tends to become sterile; pursuit of knowledge is discouraged; discussion often leaves off where it should begin.~ William O. Douglas I know no class of my fellowmen, however just, enlightened, and humane, which can be wisely and safely trusted absolutely with the liberties of any other class.~ Frederick Douglass Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.~ Frederick Douglass To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.~ Frederick Douglass What is possible for me is possible for you.~ Frederick Douglass Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning. ~ Frederick Douglass To educate a man is to unfit him to be a slave.~ Frederick Douglass He who would be free must strike the first blow.~ Frederick Douglass O freedom, first delight of human kind!~ John Dryden Better shun the bait than struggle in the snare.~ John Dryden I am as free as nature first made man, Ere the base laws of servitude began, When wild in woods the noble savage ran.~ John Dryden The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.~ W. E. B. Du Bois Of all the tasks of government, the most basic is to protect its citizens from violence.~ John Foster Dulles Previous 20 quotes Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print