Clarence Thomas Quotes
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I had sworn to administer justice 'faithfully and impartially.' To do otherwise would be to violate my oath. That meant I had no business of imposing my personal views on the country. Nor did I have the slightest intention of doing so.
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How often had he longed to hold us, hug us, grant our every wish, but held himself back for fear of letting us see his vulnerability, believing as he did that real love demanded not affection but discipline?
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I began to suspect that Daddy had been right all along: the only hope I had of changing the world was to change myself first.
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I could only choose between being an outcast and being dishonest.
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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 did that mean that we had to think alike?
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I claim my right to think for myself, to refuse to have my ideas assigned to me as though I was an intellectual slave because I'm black.
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Long after the fact, it occurred to me that this was a metaphor for life- blisters come before calluses, vulnerability before maturity- but not even the thickest of skins could have spared us the lash of Daddy's tongue.
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I was seized with a guilt that I knew would never leave me, and I knew I didn't deserve to be free of it. I hadn't quite reached the end of my rope, but I was close enough.
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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.
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For a time we wondered why our real father didn't come and rescue us, but we had long since accepted our fate by the time we finally met him.
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I could feel the golden handcuffs of a comfortable but unfulfilling life snapping shut on my wrists.
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Perhaps the fires through which I had passed would have a purifying effect on me, just as a blast furnace burns the impurities out of steel.
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The important thing was that I had never behaved inappropriately toward any woman, and I had no intention of letting my enemies hang that age-old charge of sexual impropriety around my neck. Those who wished only to exploit my past failings, not forgive them, would get no help from me.
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To define each of us by our race is nothing short of a denial of our humanity.
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An education is meaningless unless it equips students to have a better life.
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I can't see myself spending the rest of my life as a judge.
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Tillman was from South Carolina, and as I hear the story he was concerned that the corporations, Republican corporations, were favorable toward blacks and he felt that there was a need to regulate them.
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Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's interpretation of the Constitution.
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A white person is free to think whatever they want to think, but a black person has to think a certain way. Why do you think I get in so much controversy? People have a model of what they think a black person should think.
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I knew that until I was ready to tell the truth as I saw it, I was no better than a politician- but I didn't know whether I would ever be brave enough to break ranks and speak my mind.
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Then, as always, I felt morally obligated to advocate our official position, even when it conflicted with my personal views.
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I often had occasion to remind myself in years to come that self-interest isn't a principle- it's just self-interest.
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No good comes from being in the woods.
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Thanks to God's direct intervention, I had risen phoenixlike from the ashes of self-pity and despair, and though my wounds were still raw, I trusted that in time they, too, would heal.