“We must dissent from the fear.”

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 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.

Men’s minds tend to fear more keenly those things that are absent.

I let go so long ago. I fear I have forgotten how to hold on.

In this wilderness, Mankind is the animal I fear.

Do not let fear and uncertainty stop you. 

Don’t fear the clouds! The sun is ready to warm you up.

Overcome your fears, take life challenges, go for rides that you fear, learn new skills, show up whenever you see your fear is getting bigger than you.  

My biggest fear is the people I love not knowing how much I love them. I just want to remind people all the time.

Death is nothing to us. When we exist, death is not; and when death exists, we are not. All sensation and consciousness ends with death and therefore in death there is neither pleasure nor pain. The fear of death arises from the belief that in death, there is awareness.