A Quote by William O. Douglas
The framers of the constitution knew human nature as well as we do. They too had lived in dangerous days; they too knew the suffocating influence of orthodoxy and standardized thought. They weighed the compulsions for restrained speech and thought against the abuses of liberty. They chose liberty.
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As liberty of thought is absolute, so is liberty of speech, which is 'inseparable' from the liberty of thought. Liberty of speech, moreover, is essential not only for its own sake but for the sake of truth, which requires absolute liberty for the utterance of unpopular and even demonstrably false opinions.
The Framers of the Constitution knew that free speech is the friend of change and revolution. But they also knew that it is always the deadliest enemy of tyranny.
How any human being ever has had the impudence to speak against the right to speak, is beyond the power of my imagination. Here is a man who speaks-who exercises a right that he, by his speech, denies. Can liberty go further than that? Is there any toleration possible beyond the liberty to speak against liberty-the real believer in free speech allowing others to speak against the right to speak?
America was founded to be a beacon of liberty, particularly religious liberty. The framers of our Constitution sought to preserve religious liberty to such an extent that they made it the first right protected in the Bill of Rights.
When a judge goes beyond [his proper function] and reads entirely new values into the Constitution, values the framers and ratifiers did not put there, he deprives the people of their liberty. That liberty, which the Constitution clearly envisions, is the liberty of the people to set their own social agenda through the process of democracy.
The framers knew that liberty is a fragile thing, and so should we.
Civil liberty is only natural liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society. It is not a thing, in its own nature, precarious and dependent on human will and caprice; but it is conformable to the constitution of man, as well as necessary to the well-being of society.
People who have no hold over their process of thinking are likely to be ruined by liberty of thought. If thought is immature, liberty of thought becomes a method of converting men into animals.
The revolution is the war of liberty against its enemies. The constitution is the rule of liberty against its enemies. The constitution is the rule of liberty when victorious and peaceable.
No, liberty is not made for us: we are too ignorant, too vain, too presumptious, too cowardly, too vile, too corrupt, too attached to rest and to pleasure, too much slaves to fortune to ever know the true price of liberty. We boast of being free! To show how much we have become slaves, it is enough just to cast a glance on the capital and examine the morals of its inhabitants.
The two greatest things that all men aim at in any free government are liberty and permanency. We have had liberty enough - too much perhaps in some respects - but at all events, liberty to our hearts content.
'Negative liberty' is a political science term meaning a liberty from government action. It is not a liberty to anything - like the liberty to meaningfully contribute to public debate or to have ample spaces for speech.
Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it ... The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias.
Strange, i thought i knew you well, thought i had read the sky, thought i had seen a change in your eyes.
Who would have ever thought I'd find love, contentment and joy in a prison cell, but I did. I knew that I knew that I knew that day, I'd been released, and I thought to myself, "I need to tell everyone about this" because no one had ever told me.
I have always in my own thought summed up individual liberty, and business liberty, and every other kind of liberty, in the phrase that is common in the sporting world, 'A free field and no favor.'
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