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Home  »  Respectfully Quoted  »  William Orville Douglas (1898–1980)

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 442
AUTHOR: William Orville Douglas (1898–1980)
QUOTATION: There are only two choices: A police state in which all dissent is suppressed or rigidly controlled; or a society where law is responsive to human needs. If society is to be responsive to human needs, a vast restructuring of our laws is essential.

Realization of this need means adults must awaken to the urgency of the young people’s unrest—in other words there must be created an adult unrest against the inequities and injustices in the present system. If the government is in jeopardy, it is not because we are unable to cope with revolutionary situations. Jeopardy means that either the leaders or the people do not realize they have all the tools required to make the revolution come true. The tools and the opportunity exist. Only the moral imagination is missing.
ATTRIBUTION: Justice WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS, Points of Rebellion, pp. 92–93 (1970).
SUBJECTS: Dissent