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.
THURGOOD MARSHALLI’m the world’s original gradualist. I just think ninety-odd years is gradual enough.
More Thurgood Marshall Quotes
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Ending racial discrimination in jury selection can be accomplished only by eliminating peremptory challenges entirely.
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The Constitution was a product of its times.
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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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The measure of a country’s greatness is its ability to retain compassion in time of crisis.
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We must dissent from the fear.
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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.
THURGOOD MARSHALL -
I’m the world’s original gradualist. I just think ninety-odd years is gradual enough.
THURGOOD MARSHALL -
A man can make what he wants of himself if he truly believes that he must be ready for hard work and many heartbreaks.
THURGOOD MARSHALL -
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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Truth is more than a mental exercise.
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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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The First Amendment serves not only the needs of the polity but also those of the human spirit – a spirit that demands self-expression .
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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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The ban directly hampers the partys ability to spread its message and hamstrings voters seeking to inform themselves about the candidates and issues.
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Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men’s minds.
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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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None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.
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Do what you think is right and let the law catch up.
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It is a historic step toward eliminating the shameful practice of racial discrimination in the selection of juries.
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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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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.
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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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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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Equal means getting the same thing, at the same time and in the same place.
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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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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.
THURGOOD MARSHALL