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.
THURGOOD MARSHALLNone 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.
THURGOOD MARSHALLThe 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.
THURGOOD MARSHALLThe Constitution was a product of its times.
THURGOOD MARSHALLThe 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.
THURGOOD MARSHALLHistory teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.
THURGOOD MARSHALLTo protest against injustice is the foundation of all our American democracy.
THURGOOD MARSHALLMere access to the courthouse doors does not by itself assure a proper functioning of the adversary process.
THURGOOD MARSHALLSome 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.
THURGOOD MARSHALLIt 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.
THURGOOD MARSHALLA man can make what he wants of himself if he truly believes that he must be ready for hard work and many heartbreaks.
THURGOOD MARSHALLToday’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 MARSHALLA 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 MARSHALLIf 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.
THURGOOD MARSHALLEqual means getting the same thing, at the same time and in the same place.
THURGOOD MARSHALLDo what you think is right and let the law catch up.
THURGOOD MARSHALLI 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]
THURGOOD MARSHALL