Thurgood Marshall Quotes
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Customary greeting to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, What's shaking, chiefy baby?
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What is the quality of your intent?
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In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute.
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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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Some may more quietly commemorate the suffering, struggle, and sacrifice that has triumphed over much of what was wrong with the original document, and observe the anniversary with hopes not realized and promises not fulfilled. I plan to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution as a living document, including the Bill of Rights and the other amendments protecting individual freedoms and human rights.
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To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today.
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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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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]
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What is the quality of your intent? Certain people have a way of saying things that shake us at the core. Even when the words do not seem harsh or offensive, the impact is shattering. What we could be experiencing is the intent behind the words. When we intend to do good, we do. When we intend to do harm, it happens. What each of us must come to realize is that our intent always comes through.
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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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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]
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Equal means getting the same thing, at the same time and in the same place.
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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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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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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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[T]he Constitution was a product of its times. [Progressive]
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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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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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Sometimes history takes things into its own hands.
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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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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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To protest against injustice is the foundation of all our American democracy.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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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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The Ku Klux Klan never dies. They just stop wearing sheets because sheets cost too much.
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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]
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Thurgood Marshall
- Born: July 2, 1908
- Died: January 24, 1993
- Occupation: Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
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