Top 33 Clarence Thomas Quotes

There are so many people who have this idea of who I am because I’m black.

My grandfather could barely read. My grandmother had a sixth-grade education. They were people who were industrious. They were frugal.

I’ve probably given more speeches, been on TV more than any other member of the Court – or almost any other member of the Court.

There’s a difference between someone who’s ‘harsh’ and someone who is ‘hard.’ Life was hard. You lived in the South, as my grandparents did, and you had to survive. That is hard.

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.

The myths that are created about the South, about the way we grew up, about black people, are wrong.

When I went into the seminary, I was one of those victims of New Math and had not had Algebra I and had no idea what we were doing in New Math in the ninth grade. But when I went into the seminary, they had gone the traditional route and taught first-year algebra.

If I were a black liberal, I would be hailed, I guess. But I’m not. I mean, I think for myself. I want to make my own decisions.

I certainly have some very strong libertarian leanings, yes.

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.

I 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. The NAACP needs to say that.

I was Catholic. You talk about a minority within a minority within a minority: a black Catholic in Savannah, GA.

I still have a 15¢ sticker on the frame of my law degree. It’s tainted, so I just leave it in the basement.

You didn’t think of angels as white or black. They were angels.

I don’t believe in quotas. America was founded on a philosophy of individual rights, not group rights.

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.

But I know that the vote of 9 out of 10 black Americans for the Democratic Party or for leftist kinds of policies just is not reflective of their opinions.

It really bugs me that someone will tell me, after I spent 20 years being educated, how I’m supposed to think.

I think Juan stopped short – he got halfway to the destination and got off the train. He is certainly an excellent writer and a good person, but I’m not a nationalist.

It’s fascinating that people, there’s so many people now who will make judgments based on what you look like. I’m black. So I’m supposed to think a certain way. I’m supposed to have certain opinions. I don’t do that. You don’t create a box and put people in and then make a lot of generalizations about them.

My grandfather, as I said, was industrious. He’d had a variety of jobs and decided sometime in the 1940s that he would never work for anyone. He was also a very independent man.

My job is to write opinions. I decide cases and write opinions. It is not to respond to idiocy and critics who make statements that are unfounded. That doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t have constructive criticisms, but it should be constructive.

I’d been very partial to Malcolm X, particularly his self-help teachings.

I went into the seminary when I was 16.

It would seem that some black people want to say that when you, as a black, become successful, you cease to be black. That’s ridiculous.

I grew up in a religious environment, and I’m proud of it.

I do think that our freedoms are at risk.

I have to admit that I’m one of those people that thinks the dishwasher is a miracle.

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.

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.

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.

I tend to really be partial to Ayn Rand, and to The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

I grew up in a religious environment, and I’m proud of it. I was going to be a priest; I’m proud of it. And I thank God I believe in God, or I would probably be enormously angry right now.