Clarence Thomas
Clarence Thomas
Clarence Thomasis an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Thomas succeeded Thurgood Marshall and is the second African American to serve on the court...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSupreme Court Justice
Date of Birth23 June 1948
CityPin Point, GA
CountryUnited States of America
friends winning thinking
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.
teaching self helping
I'd been very partial to Malcolm X, particularly his self-help teachings.
sex differences race
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.
thinking years bugs
It really bugs me that someone will tell me, after I spent 20 years being educated, how I'm supposed to think.
wings ku-klux-klan white
I'd grown up fearing the lynch mobs of the Ku Klux Klan; as an adult I was starting to wonder if I'd been afraid of the wrong white people all along - where I was being pursued not by bigots in white robes, but by left-wing zealots draped in flowing sanctimony.
law government liberty
Government cannot make us equal; it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law.
kings mean thinking
Merely because I was black, it seemed, I was supposed to listen to Hugh Maskela instead of Carole King, just as I was expected to be a radical, not a conservative. I no longer cared to play that game ... The black people I knew came from different places and backgrounds - social, economic, even ethnic - yet the color of our skin was somehow supposed to make us identical in spite of our differences. I didn't buy it. Of course we had all experienced racism in one way or another, but that did not mean we had to think alike
inspirational goal succeed
It takes a person with a mission to succeed.
judging people constitution
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.
kids people water
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.
responsibility people decision
The only people who have quick answers don't have the responsibility of making the decisions.
believe equality race
I believe that there is a moral and constitutional equivalence between laws designed to subjugate a race and those that distribute benefits on the basis of race in order to foster some current notion of equality.... In my mind, government-sponsored racial discrimination based on benign prejudice is just as noxious as discrimination inspired by malicious prejudice.
thinking government people
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.
smart stupid years
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.