The critical point is that the Constitution places the right of silence beyond the reach of government.
William O. DouglasRead
A people who extend civil liberties only to preferred groups start down the path either to dictatorship of the right or the left.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Excluding certain groups from civil liberties can lead to authoritarianism.
William O. Douglas warns that when a society selectively grants civil liberties only to certain favored groups, it risks paving the way to a dictatorship, whether it stems from authoritarianism on the political right or left. This quote emphasizes the importance of universal civil rights as a safeguard against tyranny, suggesting that all individuals must be granted equal rights to maintain a free and just society.
Themes
Civil LibertiesDictatorshipEqualityFreedomTyranny
In practice
Example use cases
During a civil rights rally, this quote could highlight the dangers of selective freedoms.
More from William O. Douglas
All quotes βOne who comes to the Court must come to adore, not to protest. That's the new gloss on the First Amendment.
William O. DouglasRead
The great and invigorating influences in American life have been the unorthodox: the people who challenge an existing institution or way of life, or say and do things that make people think.
William O. DouglasRead
I have the same confidence in the ability of our people to reject noxious literature as I have in their capacity to sort out the true from the false in theology, economics, or any other field.
William O. DouglasRead
Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.
William O. DouglasRead
The truth is that a vast restructuring of our society is needed if remedies are to become available to the average person. Without that restructuring the good will that holds society together will be slowly dissipated... It is that sense of futility which permeates the present series of protests and dissents. Where there is a persistent sense of futility, there is violence; and that is where we are today.
William O. DouglasRead
Similar quotes
To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.
Arundhati RoyRead
I place a high moral value on the way people behave. I find it repellent to have a lot, and to behave with anything other than courtesy in the old sense of the word - politeness of the heart, a gentleness of the spirit.
Fran LebowitzRead
What I am against is false optimism: the notion either that things have to go well, or else that they tend to, or else that the default condition of historical trajectories is characteristically beneficial in the long-run.
Tony JudtRead
Under the strain of this continually impending doom and by the sleeplessness to which I now condemned myself, ay, even beyond what I had thought possible to man, I became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupied by one thought: the horror of my other self.
Robert Louis StevensonRead
Far, far below the deepest delvings of the dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things.
J. R. R. TolkienRead
When law and duty are one, united by religion, you never become fully conscious, fully aware of yourself. You are always a little less than an individual.
Frank HerbertRead