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Quotes by Thurgood Marshall


In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute.
– Thurgood Marshall
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
Ending racial discrimination in jury selection can be accomplished only by eliminating peremptory challenges entirely.
– Thurgood Marshall
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
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
Mere access to the courthouse doors does not by itself assure a proper functioning of the adversary process.
– Thurgood Marshall
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
Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men's minds.
– Thurgood Marshall
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
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
Sometimes history takes things into its own hands.
– Thurgood Marshall