Thurgood Marshall famous quotes

We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust. We must dissent from a nation that has buried its head in the sand, waiting in vain for the needs of its poor, its elderly, and its sick to disappear and just blow away. We must dissent from a government that has left its young without jobs, education or hope. We must dissent from the poverty of vision and the absence of moral leadership. We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Jobs #Blow #Government

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 Marshall

#Teacher #Appreciation #Retirement

I wish I could say that racism and prejudice were only distant memories. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust…We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Memories #Powerful #America

The measure of a country's greatness is its ability to retain compassion in times of crisis.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Country #Greatness #Compassion

You do what you think is right and let the law catch up,
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Thinking #Law

Lawlessness is lawlessness. Anarchy is anarchy is anarchy. Neither race nor color nor frustration is an excuse for either lawlessness or anarchy.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Frustration #Color #Law

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.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Mother #Baby #Children

The Ku Klux Klan never dies. They just stop wearing sheets because sheets cost too much.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Ku Klux Klan #Too Much #Prejudice

In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Inspirational #Inspiring #Freedom

Equal means getting the same thing, at the same time and in the same place.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Mean #Equal

Mere access to the courthouse doors does not by itself assure a proper functioning of the adversary process.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Doors #Doe #Process

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

#Believe #Hard Work #Men

[T]he Constitution was a product of its times. [Progressive]
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Constitution #Progressive

We can always stick together when we are losing, but tend to find means of breaking up when we're winning. In Grace under Pressure, by Hastie, 1984.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Mean #Winning #Grace

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.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Freedom #Men #Melting

Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Men #Giving #Mind

None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Soulmate #Bootstraps

Ending racial discrimination in jury selection can be accomplished only by eliminating peremptory challenges entirely.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Challenges #Discrimination #Accomplished

What's shaking, chiefy baby?
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Baby #Black History #Black

A man can make what he wants of...
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Men #African American #Want

I have a lifetime appointment and I intend to serve it. I expect to die at 110, shot by a jealous husband.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Husband #Jealous #History

The ban directly hampers the partys ability to spread its message and hamstrings voters seeking to inform themselves about the candidates and issues,
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Issues #Voters #Messages

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 Marshall

#Freedom #Democracy #Today

Sometimes history takes things into its own hands.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Hands #Historical #Sometimes

What is the quality of your intent?
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Quality #Intention

History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Inspirational #Rights #Historical

[It is] a historic step toward eliminating the shameful practice of racial discrimination in the selection of juries.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Practice #Historical #Steps

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 Marshall

#Self #Expression #Demand

I'm the world's original gradualist. I just think ninety-odd years is gradual enough.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Thinking #Years #World

Customary greeting to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, What's shaking, chiefy baby?
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Baby #Justice #Burgers

We must dissent from the fear.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Dissent

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

#Color #Law #Race

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 Marshall

#Country #Years #Justice

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 Marshall

#Business #Book #Mean

Surely the fact that a uniformed police officer is wearing his hair below his collar will make him no less identifiable as a policeman.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Hair #Police #Facts

Nothing can be more notorious than the calumnies and invectives with which the wisest measures and most virtuous characters of The United States have been pursued and traduced [By American Newspapers]
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Character #United States #Notorious

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.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Fall #Punishment #Ignorant

When in Gregg v. Georgia the Supreme Court gave its seal of approval to capital punishment, this endorsement was premised on the promise that capital punishment would be administered with fairness and justice. Instead, the promise has become a cruel and empty mockery. If not remedied, the scandalous state of our present system of capital punishment will cast a pall of shame over our society for years to come. We cannot let it continue.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Years #Punishment #Justice

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

#Ideas #Government #Fundamentals

Patriotic feelings will surely swell, prompting proud proclamations of the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice shared by the Framers and reflected in a written document now yellowed with age . . . [F]or many Americans the bicentennial celebration will be little more than a blind pilgrimage to the shrine of the original document now stored in a vault in the National Archives. [Progressive]
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Patriotic #Justice #Feelings

I cannot accept this invitation [to celebrate the bicentenial of the Constitution], 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

#Believe #Government #Philadelphia

Truth is more than a mental exercise.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Exercise #Truth Is

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

#Envy #Design #Democracy

[Jurors who are opposed to capital punishment are] more likely to believe that a defendant's failure to testify is indicative of his guilt, more hostile to the insanity defense, more mistrustful of defense attorneys and less concerned about the danger of erroneous convictions.
-- Thurgood Marshall

#Believe #Punishment #Insanity