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 THOMASThe myths that are created about the South, about the way we grew up, about black people, are wrong.
More Clarence Thomas Quotes
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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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So many of our conversations (about affirmative action) have been dishonest
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My grandfather could barely read. My grandmother had a sixth-grade education. They were people who were industrious. They were frugal.
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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.
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We’ve talked more about civil rights after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than we talked about it before 1964.
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The only people who have quick answers don’t have the responsibility of making the decisions.
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The myths that are created about the South, about the way we grew up, about black people, are wrong.
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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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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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Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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I don’t really have the luxury to be bitter. I don’t have the luxury of having negative things in my life.
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