A people who extend civil liberties only to preferred groups start down the path either to dictatorship of the right or the left.
William O. DouglasThe First Amendment makes confidence in the common sense of our people and in the maturity of their judgement the great postulate of our democracy.
William O. DouglasThe day should come when all of the forms of life... will stand before the court - the pileated woodpecker as well as the coyote and bear, the lemmings as well as the trout in the streams.
William O. DouglasWhen a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional right to free speech, it acts lawlessly; and the citizen can take matters into his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all.
William O. Douglas