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

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

Discrimination Illegal Judgement Myself Race
It really bugs me that someone will tell me, after I spent 20 years being educated, how I’m supposed to think.
CLARENCE THOMAS

Control Education Myself Thinking
I certainly have some very strong libertarian leanings, yes.
CLARENCE THOMAS

Education Learning Liberty Myself Strong
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

Attitude Freedom Liberty Man Responsibility Talk View Yourself
So many of our conversations (about affirmative action) have been dishonest
CLARENCE THOMAS

Action Conversation Honesty Ourselves
I actually think that I have been fortunate to have had misfortune, because the response, in responding to the misfortune, you develop in your own life, you develop sort of the tools you need to continue on, or to do better.
CLARENCE THOMAS

Development Fortunate Life Myself Respond Thinking Tools
The 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

Black Break Fact Production Rule Willing
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

Discrimination Economy Myself Road Service Travel
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.
CLARENCE THOMAS

Difference Impartial Judgement Law
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

Citizenship Country Goodness Human Ourselves Time
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

Break Fight Freedom Law Ourselves Punishment Society Talk Theory
It takes a person with a mission to succeed.
CLARENCE THOMAS

Mission Person Success
I have to admit that I’m one of those people that thinks the dishwasher is a miracle.
CLARENCE THOMAS

Improvement Magic Myself People Thinking
I love being around people who work with their hands, who do the hard things to keep our country going. They’re just my kind of people.
CLARENCE THOMAS

Country Hands Kind Love Myself Patriot People Work
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

Fortunate Law Need Politics Reality Reason
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

Black Confusion Myself Sacrifice Thinking
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.
CLARENCE THOMAS

Breathe Fight Immoral Learning Myself Person Reading Separate Thinking White Writing Wrong
I don’t really have the luxury to be bitter. I don’t have the luxury of having negative things in my life.
CLARENCE THOMAS

Life Luxury Myself Negative
Government cannot make us equal; it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law.
CLARENCE THOMAS

Equality Government Law Protection Recognition Respect
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

Liberty Myself Negative Radical
And I thank God I believe in God, or I would probably be enormously angry right now.
CLARENCE THOMAS

Angry God Myself Right Thankful
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

Choice Distraction Fight Life People Yourself
I do think that our freedoms are at risk.
CLARENCE THOMAS

Freedom Myself Ourselves Risk Thinking
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

Believe Business Issues Person Violence Yourself
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

Black Citizenship Identity Myself Organization
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

Belief God Government Life Live Moral Myself People Thinking
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

Children Drink Fact Funny Myself People Water

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

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

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