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 THOMASIt really bugs me that someone will tell me, after I spent 20 years being educated, how I’m supposed to think.
More Clarence Thomas Quotes
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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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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 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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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.
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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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The only people who have quick answers don’t have the responsibility of making the decisions.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I certainly have some very strong libertarian leanings, yes.
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I have to admit that I’m one of those people that thinks the dishwasher is a miracle.
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So many of our conversations (about affirmative action) have been dishonest
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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.
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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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Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot.
CLARENCE THOMAS