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.
THURGOOD MARSHALLOur Constitution is the envy of the world, as it should be for it is the grand design of the finest nation on earth.
More Thurgood Marshall Quotes
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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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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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What is the quality of your intent?
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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.
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I’m the world’s original gradualist. I just think ninety-odd years is gradual enough.
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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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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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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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The measure of a country’s greatness is its ability to retain compassion in time of crisis.
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Truth is more than a mental exercise.
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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 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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Sometimes history takes things into its own hands.
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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.
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Surely the fact that a uniformed police officer is wearing his hair below his collar will make him no less identifiable as a policeman.
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To protest against injustice is the foundation of all our American democracy.
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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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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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Equal means getting the same thing, at the same time and in the same place.
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We must dissent from the fear.
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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 Constitution was a product of its times.
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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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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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Our Constitution is the envy of the world, as it should be for it is the grand design of the finest nation on earth.
THURGOOD MARSHALL