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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

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

Civil Right Talk Time War
The only people who have quick answers don’t have the responsibility of making the decisions.
CLARENCE THOMAS

Decision People Power Quick Responsibility
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

Government Limitation Power Virtual
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
To define each of us by our race is nothing short of a denial of our humanity.
CLARENCE THOMAS

Deep Human Humanity Ourselves Race
The myths that are created about the South, about the way we grew up, about black people, are wrong.
CLARENCE THOMAS

Black Creation Fantasy Growth People Wrong
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
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
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 believe in quotas. America was founded on a philosophy of individual rights, not group rights.
CLARENCE THOMAS

Believe Foundation Myself Philosophy Right
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
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

Constitution Faith God Judgement People
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
I certainly have some very strong libertarian leanings, yes.
CLARENCE THOMAS

Education Learning Liberty Myself Strong
The truth of the matter is we have become more interested in designer jeans and break dancing than we are in obligations and responsibilities.
CLARENCE THOMAS

Break Dance Design Fashion Responsibility Truth
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
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
My grandfather could barely read. My grandmother had a sixth-grade education. They were people who were industrious. They were frugal.
CLARENCE THOMAS

Education Family Industry Myself People Reading
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
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

Difference Myself Race Sensitive Sex
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
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
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
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
The Constitution does not vest in Congress the authority to protect society from every bad act that might befall it. If followed to its logical extreme, [this approach] would result in an unwarranted expansion of federal power.
CLARENCE THOMAS

Authority Constitution Power Protection Result Society
And I thank God I believe in God, or I would probably be enormously angry right now.
CLARENCE THOMAS

Angry God Myself Right Thankful
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

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.

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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.

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Popular Authors

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