Clarence Thomas Quotes & Sayings

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

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

I certainly have some very strong libertarian leanings, yes. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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

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. — Clarence Thomas

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

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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

It takes a person with a mission to succeed. — Clarence Thomas

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

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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

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

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

I do think that our freedoms are at risk. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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

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

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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

I went into the seminary when I was 16. — Clarence Thomas

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

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

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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

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. — Clarence Thomas

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

Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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

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. — Clarence Thomas

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

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. — Clarence Thomas

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

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

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. — Clarence Thomas

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 — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

[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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas

Government cannot make us equal; it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law. That [affirmative action] programs may have been motivated, in part, by good intentions cannot provide refuge from the principle that under our Constitution, the government may not make distinctions on the basis of race. — Clarence Thomas

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. — Clarence Thomas