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.
THURGOOD MARSHALLEnding racial discrimination in jury selection can be accomplished only by eliminating peremptory challenges entirely.
More Thurgood Marshall Quotes
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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 measure of a country’s greatness is its ability to retain compassion in time of crisis.
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Sometimes history takes things into its own hands.
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Lawlessness is lawlessness. Anarchy is anarchy is anarchy. Neither race nor color nor frustration is an excuse for either lawlessness or anarchy.
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Mere access to the courthouse doors does not by itself assure a proper functioning of the adversary process.
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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.
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A man can make what he wants of himself if he truly believes that he must be ready for hard work and many heartbreaks.
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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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Equal means getting the same thing, at the same time and in the same place.
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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.
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Truth is more than a mental exercise.
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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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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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Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men’s minds.
THURGOOD MARSHALL