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 THOMASDifferences 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.
More Clarence Thomas Quotes
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It takes a person with a mission to succeed.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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So many of our conversations (about affirmative action) have been dishonest
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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.
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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.
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Government cannot make us equal; it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law.
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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.
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I certainly have some very strong libertarian leanings, yes.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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