The First Amendment serves not only the needs of the polity but also those of the human spirit – a spirit that demands self-expression .
THURGOOD MARSHALLOur whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men’s minds.
More Thurgood Marshall Quotes
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In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute.
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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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Mere access to the courthouse doors does not by itself assure a proper functioning of the adversary process.
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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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Sometimes history takes things into its own hands.
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Do what you think is right and let the law catch up.
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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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Equal means getting the same thing, at the same time and in the same place.
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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]
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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.
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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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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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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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None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.
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What is the quality of your intent?
THURGOOD MARSHALL