So many of our conversations (about affirmative action) have been dishonest
CLARENCE THOMASReligious 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.
More Clarence Thomas Quotes
-
-
I certainly have some very strong libertarian leanings, yes.
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 -
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 -
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 -
The only people who have quick answers don’t have the responsibility of making the decisions.
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 -
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 -
You didn’t think of angels as white or black. They were angels.
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
I do think that our freedoms are at risk.
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 -
Government cannot make us equal; it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law.
CLARENCE THOMAS -
Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot.
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
I have to admit that I’m one of those people that thinks the dishwasher is a miracle.
CLARENCE THOMAS