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" 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. "

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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. "

Clarence Thomas

Believe

I Believe

Person

" 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 do think that our freedoms are at risk. "

" Any 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. "

" 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. "

" My grandparents had died in 1983, and suddenly my brother is out jogging before Mass, and he dies. "

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

" 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. "

Clarence Thomas

Speeches

Almost

" 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. "

Clarence Thomas

Never

Work

" 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. "

" 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 certainly have some very strong libertarian leanings, yes. "

" I disagree with the prevailing point of view of some black leaders that special treatment for blacks is acceptable. "

" I went into the seminary when I was 16. "

Clarence Thomas

Seminary

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

Clarence Thomas

Way

People

" We've talked more about civil rights after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than we talked about it before 1964. "

Clarence Thomas

Before

Rights

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

Clarence Thomas

People

Wrong

" I think, though, if I had to look at the role of government and what it does in people's lives, I see the EEOC as having much more legitimacy than the others, if properly run. "

" 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. "