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

None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.

The United States has been called the melting pot of the world. But it seems to me that the colored man either missed getting into the pot or he got melted down.

The ban directly hampers the partys ability to spread its message and hamstrings voters seeking to inform themselves about the candidates and issues.

Sometimes history takes things into its own hands.

I’m the world’s original gradualist. I just think ninety-odd years is gradual enough.

The First Amendment serves not only the needs of the polity but also those of the human spirit – a spirit that demands self-expression .

The measure of a country’s greatness is its ability to retain compassion in time of crisis.

Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men’s minds.

The death penalty is no more effective a deterrent than life imprisonment. It is also evident that the burden of capital punishment falls upon the poor, the ignorant and the underprivileged members of society.

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.

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]

One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.

The worst mistake you can make is walking away from the person who actually stood there and waited for you.

If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were.

To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

No one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone. That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it

In our society, the women who break down barriers are those who ignore limits.

Over time you realize that some people just aren’t worth it anymore.