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 THOMASThe 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 THOMASIf 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 THOMASWe’ve talked more about civil rights after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than we talked about it before 1964.
CLARENCE THOMASIn 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 THOMASWhen 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 THOMASUnfortunately, 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 THOMASI 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 THOMASMy grandfather could barely read. My grandmother had a sixth-grade education. They were people who were industrious. They were frugal.
CLARENCE THOMASI 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 THOMASAny 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 THOMASI certainly have some very strong libertarian leanings, yes.
CLARENCE THOMASIt takes a person with a mission to succeed.
CLARENCE THOMASYou 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 THOMASWhen 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 THOMASOh, 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.
CLARENCE THOMASYou didn’t think of angels as white or black. They were angels.
CLARENCE THOMAS