William O. Douglas Quotes

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

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."

[The One Un-American Act, Speech to the Author's Guild Council in New York, on receiving the 1951 Lauterbach Award (December 3, 1952)]

Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order [...] and the like.

The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom."

[Public Utilities Commission v. Pollak, 343 U.S. 451, 467 (1952) (dissenting)]

We are rapidly entering the age of no privacy, where everyone is open to surveillance at all times; where there are no secrets from government."

[Osborn v. United States, 385 U.S. 323, 341 (1966) (dissenting)]