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

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.

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.

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.

The valor that struggles is better than the weakness that endures.

A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not to be endured with patient resignation.

The being who patiently endures injustice, and silently bears insults, will soon become unjust, or unable to discern right from wrong.

Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgot.

The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.

How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?

Look at our story: It is enduring.

If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.