William O. Douglas Quotes

It’s less important to have unanimity than it is making the right decisions and doing the right thing, even though at the outset it might be loathsome.

There is no doubt that dissents can serve a useful role by explaining when a justice thinks the majority has gone off the deep end. But unanimity also sends its own powerful message - one that might be eclipsed in the headlines by a sensational dissent but could ultimately have a greater impact.

But doing what I do, you will never get unanimity of people.

Bush wasn't elected, he was selected - selected by five judges up in Washington who voted along party lines.

If you can find something everyone agrees on, it's wrong.

It is idle to await unanimity.

Lawsuits are rare and catastrophic experiences for the vast majority of men, and even when the catastrophe ensues, the controversy relates most often not to the law, but to the facts. In countless litigations, the law Is so clear that judges have no discretion.

If the law were so simple we would not have so many 5-4 decisions of the Supreme Court

The only place you find unanimity is in the graveyard. And even there, I have heard it said, at election times the dead have been known to vote in various ways.

It was a remarkably reasonable compromise. It pleased nobody, but everybody signed on.

On no question can a perfect unanimity be hoped.

A Supreme Court justice is sometimes a liberal on one issue and a conservative on another.

If any dispute arises among the parties to this document from which any quarrel may be feared, it shall be referred to God and to Muhammad (Peace be upon them), the Messenger of God for the final and absolute decision.

The first opinion the Court ever filed had a dissenting opinion. Dissent is a tradition of this Court... When someone is writing for the Court, he hopes to get eight others to agree with him, so many of the majority opinions are rather stultified.

… the difficulty in bringing our people to agree upon it has ever discouraged me.

You don't want a Supreme Court Justice to rule without knowing the consequence of the ruling in it's legal and non-legal aspects.

It's not simply to say, 'My colleagues are wrong, and I would do it this way,' but the greatest dissents do become court opinions.

The experience I don't want to see repeated occurred in 'Bush v. Gore.' The Court divided five to four. There were four separate dissents, and that confused the press. In fact, some of the reporters announced that the decision was seven-two. There was no time to get together.

The truth is that nobody agrees with anybody 100 percent of the time.

I have, on several occasions, disagreed with decisions of Justice Souter.

My dissenting opinions, like my briefs, are intended to persuade. And sometimes one must be forceful about saying how wrong the Court's decision is.

It is often hard to secure unanimity about the borders of legislative power, but that is much easier than to decide how far a particular adjustment diverges from what the judges deem tolerable. On such issues experience has over and over again shown the difficulty of securing unanimity. This is disastrous because disunity cancels the impact of monolithic solidarity on which the authority of a bench of judges so largely depends.

If we agree on everything, only one of us is necessary.

Unfortunately, unanimity is not always feasible.

The effect of the people's agreeing that there must be central planning, without agreeing on the ends, will be rather as if a group of people were to commit themselves to take a journey together without agreeing where they want to go; with the result that they may all have to make a journey which most of them do not want at all.