Thurgood Marshall Quotes.
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.
I never worked hard until I got to the Howard Law School and met Charlie Houston… I saw this man’s dedication, his vision, his willingness to sacrifice, and I told myself, ‘You either shape up or ship out.’ When you are being challenged by a great human being, you know that you can’t ship out.
My father had a flat rule. He believed that every man’s house was his castle. He had a flat rule: no man could come in his house without his permission.
We could get more action in the South because the Negroes had a feeling that they were being oppressed. But you take New York, for example: they’d give Negroes little five-cent jobs here and there – and they thought they had something. And the same in Chicago and any of the metropolitan areas.
It was taken for granted that we had to make something of ourselves. Not much was said about it; it was just in the atmosphere of the home.
Do what you think is right and let the law catch up.
The measure of a country’s greatness is its ability to retain compassion in time of crisis.
Mere access to the courthouse doors does not by itself assure a proper functioning of the adversary process.
Each of you, as an individual, must pick your own goals. Listen to others, but do not become a blind follower.
What is the quality of your intent?
Ending racial discrimination in jury selection can be accomplished only by eliminating peremptory challenges entirely.
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.
The Ku Klux Klan never dies. They just stop wearing sheets because sheets cost too much.
When you hear a lot of stories about Africa, and you get to a place like Kenya and other countries like that, where they think the same way we do, I was happy to find that the Schedule of Rights that I drew for the Kenyan Government was working very well.
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.
In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute.
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.
