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" 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. "

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" 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

" 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. "

" Unfortunately, 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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

" 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. "

" When 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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 hear people say it affected your self-esteem to be segregated. It never affected mine. "

" 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. "

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

Clarence Thomas

Seminary

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I was sympathetic to virtually all groups that wanted to get away from the old system. "

" 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. "

" And I thank God I believe in God, or I would probably be enormously angry right now. "