A child born to a Black mother in a state like Mississippi… has exactly the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It’s not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for.
THURGOOD MARSHALLHistory teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.
More Thurgood Marshall Quotes
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Our Constitution is the envy of the world, as it should be for it is the grand design of the finest nation on earth.
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Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men’s minds.
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History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.
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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.
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Sometimes history takes things into its own hands.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.
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Some years ago I said in an opinion that if this country is a melting pot, then either the Afro-Americans didn’t get in the pot or he didn’t get melted down.
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If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his house, what books he may read or what films he may watch.
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What is the quality of your intent?
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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.
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Ending racial discrimination in jury selection can be accomplished only by eliminating peremptory challenges entirely.
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We can always stick together when we are losing, but tend to find means of breaking up when we’re winning.
THURGOOD MARSHALL