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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.

Thurgood Marshall

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Thurgood Marshall
Age: 84 †
Born: 1908
Born: July 2
Died: 1993
Died: January 24
Former Associate Justice Of The Supreme Court Of The United States
Judge
Lawyer
Politician
Baltimore
Maryland
Thoroughgood Marshall
Sense
Documents
Today
Cherish
Realistic
Corrective
Several
Document
Constitution
Blacks
Democracy
Decency
Freedom
Amendments
Speak
Fairness

More quotes by Thurgood Marshall

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Ending racial discrimination in jury selection can be accomplished only by eliminating peremptory challenges entirely.
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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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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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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.
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What's shaking, chiefy baby?
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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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Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.
Thurgood Marshall
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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 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
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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]
Thurgood Marshall
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We must dissent from the fear.
Thurgood Marshall
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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.
Thurgood Marshall
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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.
Thurgood Marshall
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I'm the world's original gradualist. I just think ninety-odd years is gradual enough.
Thurgood Marshall
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None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.
Thurgood Marshall
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Customary greeting to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, What's shaking, chiefy baby?
Thurgood Marshall
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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.
Thurgood Marshall
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Sometimes history takes things into its own hands.
Thurgood Marshall
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To protest against injustice is the foundation of all our American democracy.
Thurgood Marshall
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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.
Thurgood Marshall