Quotes
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Statement on Introducing Legislation For the Custody and Treatment of Persons Federally Acquitted on Insanity Grounds, Senate Floor
All of the recent court rulings reflect a judgment that those whose crimes occur because of mental illness should be treated for their illness rather than punished for their conduct.
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Address Delivered to the American Bar Association, House of Delegates, San Francisco, California
Crime is not only a cause of economic waste, but far worse than that, it is a reproach to the moral pretensions of our society, and advertises to the world the gap between our pronouncements and our performance.
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Address Before Young Israel of Pelham Parkway at the Concourse Plaza Hotel, New York City
Most of our fellow citizens do their best—and do it the modest, unspectacular, decent, natural way which is the highest form of public service. But every day in a shameful variety of ways the selfish actions of the small minority sully the honor of our na
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Address at the Day of Affirmation at the University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of…
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Address at the Dinner Honoring Congressman James C. Corman at the Sportsmen’s Lodge, Los Angeles, California
Almost every man now working in the United States will have to change jobs, perhaps two or three times, and his lifetime. That will require new education for all our people—for those who could not complete college in the past, and even those who did.
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Speech at the Law Day Exercises of the University of Georgia Law School, Athens, Georgia
Crime, violence in the streets and the dissolution of families and personalities are not eliminated by calling them evil and blaming them on “some other” party. Nor are they eliminated by sloughing them off onto “some other” level of government. We begin by accepting the blame and the responsibility, not by displacing or disregarding them.…
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Speech in Chicago
The financial cost of organized crime is not limited to the vast illicit profits of gambling or narcotics.
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Address at the Dinner Honoring Congressman James C. Corman at the Sportsmen’s Lodge, Los Angeles, California
As attorney general, I found crime to be, with civil rights, one of our two most serious domestic problems. The crime rate rises by seven percent a year, there is a robbery every five minutes, an aggravated assault every three minutes, a car stolen every minute.
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Speech at the Dedication of the John F. Kennedy Interfaith Chapel at West Georgia College in Carrollton, Georgia
For an American man, woman, or child to be turned away from a public place for no reason other than the color of his skin is an intolerable insult, an insult that is in no way eased by the bland explanation that it has been allowed to go on for a hundred years or more.…
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Speech in New York
The individual man, in whose hands democracy must put its faith and its fate, is capable of great heights of achievement. He is also capable of infinite degradation. Fortunately most of our institutions have safe-guards which ultimately unseat a man when power results in arrogance and corruption. But often before justice is done the very…
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Speech at Academy of Trial Lawyers, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
The legitimate purpose of bail is to ensure that defendants appear for trial. It has been distorted into systematic injustice. Every year thousands of persons are kept in jail for weeks and even months following arrest.
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Speech at Academy of Trial Lawyers, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Through most of the United States today the bail system is a cruel and illogical institution which perpetuates injustice in the name of the law. In actual practice, control is frequently in the hands of bondsmen rather than the courts.
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