THURGOOD MARSHALL

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

Mere access to the courthouse doors does not by itself assure a proper functioning of the adversary process.

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

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.

Sometimes history takes things into its own hands.

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.

What is the quality of your intent?

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

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.

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

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

If the 1st Amendment means anything, it means that the state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch.

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

... a boy on a man's errand.

A man's home is his castle. His bedroom is in the middle of it. I don't want anyone snooping around in my bedroom.

Democracy cannot flourish amid fear.

I spent most of my life getting the word "negro" to be spelled with a capital "N." By the time I finally got that done people were using the word "black" with a small "b.

Justice cannot take root amid rage.

Liberty cannot bloom amid hate.

The complete destruction of all enforced segregation is now in sight.

The government they devised was defective from the start.

... if the United States is indeed the great melting pot, the Negro either didn't get in the pot or he didn't get melted down.

The protest is part of the American way of life.

There is no drug exception to the Constitution.

Power, not reason, is the new currency of this court's decision making