Life & Mortality Quote by Thurgood Marshall

A lifetime appointment is supposed to read like marble: dignified, insulated, above the mess. Marshall turns it into a punchline about flesh. The joke lands because it yanks the Supreme Court off its pedestal and drops it into the human world of grudges, sex, and bad luck. “I intend to serve it” performs the dutiful justice’s vow, but the next line detonates any expectation of austere reverence. He’s not just promising longevity; he’s mocking the fantasy that power can ever be truly untouchable.

The subtext is part defiance, part self-protection. As the first Black justice, Marshall carried the constant pressure of symbolism: every decision scrutinized, every public appearance freighted with “role model” seriousness. Humor here is armor. By exaggerating his death to the absurd (110! a jealous husband!), he sidesteps the morbid reality that political enemies wanted him gone from the bench in a more bureaucratic way: retirement, replacement, erasure. The jealousy gag also slyly reframes risk. It’s not the state, not ideology, not grand historical forces that will take him out - it’s the petty chaos of ordinary life. That’s a democratizing move, and a rebuke to anyone who mythologizes institutions.

Context matters: Marshall came up as a litigator fighting segregation, then as a justice often in dissent as the Court shifted right. The line reads like a refusal to be politely sunset. He’s telling colleagues, presidents, and pundits: you don’t get to schedule my exit. If I leave, it’ll be on my terms - or at least on terms too ridiculous for them to control.