Clarence Thomas Quotations

My grandfather was a man, when he talked about freedom, his attitude was really interesting. His view was that you had obligations or you had responsibilities, and when you fulfilled those obligations or responsibilities, that then gave you the liberty to do other things.

My grandfather could barely read. My grandmother had a sixth-grade education. They were people who were industrious. They were frugal.

And I don't think that government has a role in telling people how to live their lives. Maybe a minister does, maybe your belief in God does, maybe there's another set of moral codes, but I don't think government has a role.

There's a difference between someone who's 'harsh' and someone who is 'hard.' Life was hard. You lived in the South, as my grandparents did, and you had to survive. That is hard. In order to respond to that, he had to become a hard man, with very hard rules, very hard discipline for himself, very hard days, hard work, et cetera.

Even as someone who's labeled a conservative - I'm a Republican I'm black, I'm heading up this organization in the Reagan administration - I can say that conservatives don't exactly break their necks to tell blacks that they're welcome.

I don't believe in quotas. America was founded on a philosophy of individual rights, not group rights.

I think, though, if I had to look at the role of government and what it does in people's lives, I see the EEOC as having much more legitimacy than the others, if properly run.

I'd grown up fearing the lynch mobs of the Ku Klux Klan; as an adult I was starting to wonder if I'd been afraid of the wrong white people all along - where I was being pursued not by bigots in white robes, but by left-wing zealots draped in flowing sanctimony.

It's fascinating that people, there's so many people now who will make judgments based on what you look like. I'm black. So I'm supposed to think a certain way. I'm supposed to have certain opinions. I don't do that. You don't create a box and put people in and then make a lot of generalizations about them.

You have a number of choices. You could continue to always fight against people who are really distractions. They're people in the cheap seats of life. Or you can do what you went there to do.

Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot.

You didn't think of angels as white or black. They were angels.

I'd been very partial to Malcolm X, particularly his self-help teachings.

But I know that the vote of 9 out of 10 black Americans for the Democratic Party or for leftist kinds of policies just is not reflective of their opinions.

I was Catholic. You talk about a minority within a minority within a minority: a black Catholic in Savannah, GA.

My job is to write opinions. I decide cases and write opinions. It is not to respond to idiocy and critics who make statements that are unfounded. That doesn't mean that people shouldn't have constructive criticisms, but it should be constructive.

But what I believe is that if a person's individual rights or right to be a part of our economic system is violated under statute, we aggressively go after it. But we don't issue mandates to businesses that you've got to do this and you've got to do that.

I tend to really be partial to Ayn Rand, and to The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

People get bent out of shape about the fact that when I was a kid, you could not drink out of certain water fountains. Well, the water was the same.

I think Juan stopped short - he got halfway to the destination and got off the train. He is certainly an excellent writer and a good person, but I'm not a nationalist.

I've probably given more speeches, been on TV more than any other member of the Court - or almost any other member of the Court.

My grandparents had died in 1983, and suddenly my brother is out jogging before Mass, and he dies.

I think segregation is bad, I think it's wrong, it's immoral. I'd fight against it with every breath in my body, but you don't need to sit next to a white person to learn how to read and write. The NAACP needs to say that.

I was never a liberal. I was radical. I was cynical. I was negative. But, I was never a liberal. I always saw that as too lukewarm for me.

When you look at where the real problems are among minorities in our society, particularly blacks, it's at the bottom. It's the people who are in school systems that don't educate, neighborhoods where there is a lot of crime, drugs, the whole bit.

We've talked more about civil rights after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than we talked about it before 1964.

I don't know one of my friends who is considered a conservative who has not had to go back and thoroughly think through everything. You do a lot of soul-searching - 'cause we are not going to win any popularity contests.

And I thank God I believe in God, or I would probably be enormously angry right now.

I have to admit that I'm one of those people that thinks the dishwasher is a miracle.

I certainly have some very strong libertarian leanings, yes.

I disagree with the prevailing point of view of some black leaders that special treatment for blacks is acceptable.

It really bugs me that someone will tell me, after I spent 20 years being educated, how I'm supposed to think.

The myths that are created about the South, about the way we grew up, about black people, are wrong.

Any discrimination, like sharp turns in a road, becomes critical because of the tremendous speed at which we are traveling into the high-tech world of a service economy.

I grew up in a religious environment, and I'm proud of it. I was going to be a priest; I'm proud of it. And I thank God I believe in God, or I would probably be enormously angry right now.

My grandfather, as I said, was industrious. He'd had a variety of jobs and decided sometime in the 1940s that he would never work for anyone. He was also a very independent man.

Oh, I don't think Tom Sowell would tell anybody to join the administration. That's not his style. But I think his attitude has always been if it had to be done he'd prefer me to do it than somebody else.

Unfortunately, the reality was that, for political reasons or whatever, there was a need to enforce antidiscrimination laws, or at least there was a perceived need to do that.

I do think that our freedoms are at risk.

If I were a black liberal, I would be hailed, I guess. But I'm not. I mean, I think for myself. I want to make my own decisions.

It would seem that some black people want to say that when you, as a black, become successful, you cease to be black. That's ridiculous.

The thing that bothered me when I was in college was that I saw myself rejecting the way of life that got me to where I was.

I hear people say it affected your self-esteem to be segregated. It never affected mine.

I grew up in a religious environment, and I'm proud of it.

I was sympathetic to virtually all groups that wanted to get away from the old system.

I went into the seminary when I was 16.

There are so many people who have this idea of who I am because I'm black.

When I went into the seminary, I was one of those victims of New Math and had not had Algebra I and had no idea what we were doing in New Math in the ninth grade. But when I went into the seminary, they had gone the traditional route and taught first-year algebra.

We hold that the program , as it appears to have been structured at the time (Harper) was placed on it, differed from parole in name only, ... and affirm the (appeals court's) decision.

She was a student member of the promotions committee for Rocky Dailey. I was supposed to get in contact with her but couldn't reach her. The police told the dean who told me that she had just died.

He is a great man. There is nothing I could say to tease him.

the demeaning treatment Anita Hill received before the all-male committee.

The Constitution does not vest in Congress the authority to protect society from every bad act that might befall it....[I]f followed to its logical extreme, [this approach] would result in an unwarranted expansion of federal power.

[T]he courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior.... The mere fact that a school is black does not mean that it is the product of an unconstitutional violation.

To define each of us by our race is nothing short of a denial of our humanity.

So many of our conversations (about affirmative action) have been dishonest

A good argument diluted to avoid criticism is not nearly as good as the undiluted argument, because we best arrive at truth through a process of honest and vigorous debate. Arguments should not sneak around in disguise, as if dissent were somehow sinister... For it is bravery that is required to secure freedom.

If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything-and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.

Long gone is the time when we [blacks] opposed the notion that we all looked alike and talked alike. Somehow we have come to exalt the new black stereotype above all and demand conformity to that norm.... [However], I assert my right to think for myself, to refuse to have my ideas assigned to me as though I was an intellectual slave because I'm black.

The White House said today that Judge Clarence Thomas, President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, had smoked marijuana while in college.

Religious liberty is about freedom of action in matters of religion generally, and the scope of that liberty is directly correlated to the civil restraints placed upon religious practice.

I agree with the (Supreme Court's) holding that racial discrimination in higher education admissions will be illegal in 25 years. They are illegal now.

I would walk into the Carnegie Library and I would see the pictures of Booker T. and pictures of Frederick Douglass and I would read. I would go into the Savannah Public Libraries in the stacks and see all of the newspapers from all over the country. Did I dream that I would be on the Supreme Court? No. But I dreamt that there was a world out there that was worth pursuing.

Perhaps some are confused because they have stereotypes of how blacks should be and I respectfully decline, as I did in my youth, to sacrifice who I am for who they think I should be.

While the romanticized ideal of universal public education resonates with the cognoscenti who oppose vouchers, poor urban families just want the best education for their children, who will certainly need it to function in our high-tech and advanced society.

The absolute worst I have ever been treated, the worst things that have been done to me, the worst things that have been said about me, are by northern liberal elites, not by the people of Savannah, Georgia.

When I was a kid, we said that we were precluded from going to certain neighborhoods because of the color of our skin Now the neighborhoods are the neighborhoods of ideas, youre not supposed to be there because of the color of your skin.

I'm not an Uncle Tom. . .. I'm going to be here for 40 years. For those who don't like it, get over it.

In our society, marriage is not simply a governmental institution; it is a religious institution as well, today's decision might change the former, but it cannot change the latter.

The truth of the matter is we have become more interested in designer jeans and break dancing than we are in obligations and responsibilities.

Today, now, it is time to move forward, a time to look for what is good in others, what is good in our country. It is time to see what we have in common, what we have to share as human beings and citizens.

In my humble opinion, those who come to engage in debates of consequence, and who challenge accepted wisdom, should expect to be treated badly. Nonetheless, they must stand undaunted. That is required. And that should be expected. For it is bravery that is required to secure freedom.

A theory deeply etched in our law [is that] a free society prefers to punish the few who abuse the rights of free speech after they break the law rather than to throttle them and all others beforehand.

The Constitution, in addition to delegating certain enumerated powers to Congress, places whole areas outside the reach of Congress' regulatory authority. The First Amendment, for example, is fittingly celebrated for preventing Congress from "prohibiting the free exercise" of religion or "abridging the freedom of speech." The Second Amendment similarly appears to contain an express limitation on the government's authority.

The Constitution contains no 'dignity' Clause, and even if it did, the government would be incapable of bestowing dignity. ... Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits.

Differences in race, differences in sex, somebody doesn’t look at you right, somebody says something. Everybody is sensitive. If I had been as sensitive as that in the 1960s, I’d still be in Savannah.

The job of a judge is to figure out what the law says, not what he wants it to say. There is a difference between the role of a judge and that of a policy maker... Judging requires a certain impartiality.

Government cannot make us equal; it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law.

Merely because I was black, it seemed, I was supposed to listen to Hugh Maskela instead of Carole King, just as I was expected to be a radical, not a conservative. I no longer cared to play that game ... The black people I knew came from different places and backgrounds - social, economic, even ethnic - yet the color of our skin was somehow supposed to make us identical in spite of our differences. I didn't buy it. Of course we had all experienced racism in one way or another, but that did not mean we had to think alike

It takes a person with a mission to succeed.

A judge should be evaluated by whether he faithfully upholds his oath to God, not to the people, to the state or to the Constitution.

The only people who have quick answers don't have the responsibility of making the decisions.

I believe that there is a moral and constitutional equivalence between laws designed to subjugate a race and those that distribute benefits on the basis of race in order to foster some current notion of equality.... In my mind, government-sponsored racial discrimination based on benign prejudice is just as noxious as discrimination inspired by malicious prejudice.

I was smart enough to use pot without getting caught, and now I'm on the Supreme Court. If you were stupid enough to get caught, that's your problem. Your appeal is denied. This 40 year sentence just might teach you a lesson.

When you prevent somebody from participating in our free society and the economics of our free society, I have some real problems.

Without performing legal acrobatics, I cannot make the instruction confusing. And I certainly cannot do the contortions necessary to find the Texas appellate court's decision 'objectively unreasonable.

We will miss him deeply as a friend and as a colleague. He was a good man who epitomized fairness, dignity and strength of character.

There is some misunderstanding. We do not look any place. We do not recruit. We are passive. We look at what comes to us.

The state can't undo the harm that was done, but I feel very strongly that if there is any role for the state, it is to protect us from others.

This detention falls squarely within the federal government's war powers, and we lack the expertise and capacity to second-guess that decision.

It runs the risk of undermining the manner in which we consider the cases. Certainly it will change our proceedings. And I don't think for the better.

Because the president, not the (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration) could authorize or not authorize cross-border operations from Mexican motor carriers, and because FMCSA has no discretion to prevent the entry of Mexican trucks, its EA did not need to consider the environmental effects arising from the entry,

I came from the people that they're leading; I didn't come from the leadership ranks, I came from among the people I'm most concerned about.

I' been very partial to Malcolm X, particularly his self-help teachings.

a good man who epitomized fairness, dignity and strength of character.