“To protest against injustice is the foundation of all our American democracy.”

Ending racial discrimination in jury selection can be accomplished only by eliminating peremptory challenges entirely.

Equal means getting the same thing, at the same time and in the same place.

The Constitution was a product of its times.

Classifications and distinctions based on race or color have no moral or legal validity in our society. They are contrary to our constitution and laws.

What is the quality of your intent?

We must dissent from the fear.

We can always stick together when we are losing, but tend to find means of breaking up when we’re winning.

I cannot accept this invitation for I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever ‘fixed’ at the Philadelphia Convention… To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start. [Progressive]

Mere access to the courthouse doors does not by itself assure a proper functioning of the adversary process.

History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.

Lawlessness is lawlessness. Anarchy is anarchy is anarchy. Neither race nor color nor frustration is an excuse for either lawlessness or anarchy.

The process of democracy is one of change. Our laws are not frozen into immutable form, they are constantly in the process of revision in response to the needs of a changing society.

None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody – a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns – bent down and helped us pick up our boots.

Today’s Constitution is a realistic document of freedom only because of several corrective amendments. Those amendments speak to a sense of decency and fairness that I and other Blacks cherish.

It is now well established that the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas.This right to receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth, is fundamental to our free society.

In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute.

The way the Queens Democratic party machine has worked, they operate on a politics of exclusion.

In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.

If we don’t have workers organized into labor unions, we’re in great peril of losing our democracy.

Substantively Democrats are much closer to where the American people are than Republicans are.

Our democracy is designed to speak truth to power.

Not all Democrats are the same.

For me, democratic socialism is about – really, the value for me is that I believe that in a modern, moral, and wealthy society, no person in America should be too poor to live.

Democracy is defended in 3 stages. Ballot Box, Jury Box, Cartridge Box.