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

Clarence Thomas

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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

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

Clarence Thomas

" 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

" 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. "

Clarence Thomas

" 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. "

Clarence Thomas

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

Clarence Thomas

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

Clarence Thomas

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

Clarence Thomas

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

Clarence Thomas

" 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. "

Clarence Thomas

" 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. "

Clarence Thomas

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

Clarence Thomas

" 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. "

Clarence Thomas

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

Clarence Thomas

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

Clarence Thomas

" 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

" 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. "

Clarence Thomas

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

Clarence Thomas

" 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. "

Clarence Thomas

" 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. "

Clarence Thomas

" 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. "

Clarence Thomas

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

Clarence Thomas

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

Clarence Thomas

" 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. "

Clarence Thomas

" 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. "

Clarence Thomas

" My grandfather was a man, when he talked about freedom, his attitude was really interesting. His view was that you had obligations or you had responsibilities, and when you fulfilled those obligations or responsibilities, that then gave you the liberty to do other things. "

Clarence Thomas

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

Clarence Thomas

" 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. "

Clarence Thomas

" 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. "

Clarence Thomas

" 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. "

Clarence Thomas