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

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 141
AUTHOR: William Orville Douglas (1898–1980)
QUOTATION: One aspect of modern life which has gone far to stifle men is the rapid growth of tremendous corporations. Enormous spiritual sacrifices are made in the transformation of shopkeepers into employees…. The disappearance of free enterprise has led to a submergence of the individual in the impersonal corporation in much the same manner as he has been submerged in the state in other lands.
ATTRIBUTION: WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS, chairman, Securities and Exchange Commission, speech at annual dinner of Fordham University Alumni Association, New York City, February 9, 1939.—James Allen, Democracy and Finance, p. 291 (1940, reprinted 1969).

This was Douglas’s last speech before his appointment to the Supreme Court.
SUBJECTS: Business