Thurgood Marshall Quotes

Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on.

Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men’s minds.

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

Sometimes history takes things into its own hands.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Equal means getting the same thing, at the same time and in the same place.

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.

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.

Truth is more than a mental exercise.

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

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.

What is the quality of your intent?

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