What is the quality of your intent?

I'm the world's original gradualist. I just think ninety-odd years is gradual enough.

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.

Customary greeting to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, What's shaking, chiefy baby?

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.

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.

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