James Forman Jr. Quotes

I'd like to professionally... continue my education and hopefully become an attorney. I think that's the best way to stop the miscarriage of justice that happened to me from happening to somebody else. I don't think it should ever happen to anyone ever again - not one person.

As soon as I got out of law school, I went to inner city Newark, New Jersey, to become a housing rights lawyer, because people fought for my housing rights, I was going to pay it forward by fighting for others.

People send their kids to law school to uphold the rule of law - not to fight in the streets for justice and not to be beaten up.

I had thought about becoming a civil rights lawyer, but I gave it up.

I chose to go to law school because I thought that someday, somehow I'd make a difference.

The more lawyers there are, the more people are out there to encourage others not to go to law school.

I was determined to become a criminal lawyer and help look after the poor.

I filed a brief as a friend of the court in the U. of Michigan to keep affirmative action at the U. of Michigan, which I attended the law school. And I was one of the original sponsors of making the Martin Luther King birthday a federal holiday.

After Yale Law School, I was proud to try to live up to my parents' example and began my career working for The Urban Justice Center in the streets of Newark, organizing residents to fight for better housing conditions.

If we are to fulfill the promise of this great Nation that everybody in our society has equal access to the law, obviously having the resources to have access to the law is extremely important.

The Nation of Islam's main focus was teaching black pride and self-awareness. Why should we keep trying to force ourselves into white restaurants and schools when white people didn't want us? Why not clean up our own neighborhoods and schools instead of trying to move out of them and into white people's neighborhoods?

I was a sociology major. And it had nothing to do necessarily with law, which is ultimately - I went to law school. But what I tried to do was choose something that I was passionate about or something that I cared about.

If I wasn't a musician, I'd take up the law. They are the rottenest, wealthiest people in America.

I went to law school to help people.

Where are Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton? They don't speak for Black America, and they don't speak for me.

As a freshman at Stanford University - a young black man - when O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murder, it was a joyful moment. I was happy, absolutely. It wasn't necessarily a matter of whether he was guilty or innocent, per se, it was a matter of finally seeing someone who looked like me have the justice system work in their favor.

I don't hold any contempt for people who are practicing law. I know how hard it is, I know how hard they work, and I know some of them who are so unhappy with it.

Now I know that lawyers must live, but I've never been able to understand why they have to live so blamed well!

The most dangerous thing in American society is a self-respecting and self-loving black person, because they're on the road to freedom and that means they're gonna run up against the powers that be.

Ironically, I come from a family of lawyers - my dad, my grandfather, and now my oldest son. And some of my very best friends are lawyers, though they don't resemble the ones that appear in my novels.

Malcolm X never renounced and never stepped away from a strong commitment to black nationalism and black self-determination. That's absolutely clear if you do any analysis of his speeches.

What Black Consciousness seeks to do is to produce real black people who do not regard themselves as appendages to white society. We do not need to apologise for this because it is true that the white systems have produced through the world a number of people who are not aware that they too are people.

I always wanted to play a lawyer.

As a public interest lawyer, your fund of injustice will never be empty.

Criticizing lawyers for lawsuits is like criticizing linebackers for knocking people down.