Thurgood Marshall Quotes

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.

Do what you think is right and let the law catch up.

Each of you, as an individual, must pick your own goals. Listen to others, but do not become a blind follower.

Truth is more than a mental exercise.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

To protest against injustice is the foundation of all our American democracy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It is important that the strongest pressures against the continuation of segregation, North or South, be continually and constantly manifested. Probably, as much as anything else, this is the key in the elimination of discrimination in the United States.

We deal here with the right of all of our children, whatever their race, to an equal start in life and to an equal opportunity to reach their full potential as citizens. Those children who have been denied that right in the past deserve better than to see fences thrown up to deny them that right in the future.

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

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.

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

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

What is the quality of your intent?

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

The measure of a country’s greatness is its ability to retain compassion in time of crisis.

A man can make what he wants of himself if he truly believes that he must be ready for hard work and many heartbreaks.