I cannot accept this invitation [to celebrate the bicentenial of the Constitution], for I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever 'fixed' at the Philadelphia Convention... To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start. [Progressive]

History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.

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

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

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.

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.

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