Clarence Thomas Quotes (1948-)

“Despite some of the nonsense that has been said about me by those who should know better, and so much nonsense, or some of which subtracts from the sum total of human knowledge, despite this all, I am a man, a black man, an American. And my history is not unlike that of many blacks from the deep South. And in many ways it is not that much different from that of many other Americans.”

“Since well before 1787, liberty has been understood as freedom from government action, not entitlement to government benefits.”

“[H]uman dignity is innate... Human dignity cannot be taken away by the government... The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Obergefell enables courts and governments to brand religious adherents who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman as bigots, making their religious liberty concerns that much easier to dismiss.”

“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 notion of civility does not submit easily to definition. To pardon a phrase, it's sort of a "we know it when we see it" phenomenon. Most of us know when we are treated rudely, disrespectfully, or improperly. We also know in our hearts when we treat others uncivilly. Perhaps with all the problems in the world today, this might not seem very important. In this country, crime and poverty still plague us. In Bosnia, we see the attempted extermination of an entire people. Yet, notions of fair play, civility, and respect for the inherent worth of another person's ideas, are all values that have been vital to the continued success of this country, and essential tools which our leaders must bring to any domestic or international crisis.”

“In enacting the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, the Framers similarly chose to employ the 'life, liberty, or property' formulation, though they otherwise deviated substantially from the States' use of Magna Carta's language in the Clause. When read in light of the history of that formulation, it is hard to see how the 'liberty' protected by the Clause could be interpreted to include anything broader than freedom from physical restraint. That was the consistent usage of the time when 'liberty' was paired with 'life' and 'property'. And that usage avoids rendering superfluous those protections for 'life' and 'property'. If the Fifth Amendment uses 'liberty' in this narrow sense, then the Fourteenth Amendment likely does as well.”

“Human dignity has long been understood in this country to be innate. When the framers proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that 'all men are created equal' and 'endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights', they referred to a vision of mankind in which all humans are created in the image of God and therefore of inherent worth. That vision is the foundation upon which this nation was built. The corollary of that principle is that human dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity, any more than they lost their humanity, because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.”

“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.”

“We owe a debt of immeasurable gratitude to Harry Jaffa for recovering for us the true Lincoln and for helping us remember our sacred heritage, our nation's founding devotion to the truth of human equality and liberty, a truth applicable to all men at all times.”

“One fact lay embedded in the center of the Clarence Thomas controversy: We have lost a great American jurist, Thurgood Marshall. No one can replace him. The very thought of replacing him insults the brilliance of his career and the exceptional humanity of his intelligence as he reflected upon our most extreme and consequential public debates. And yet someone new had to be appointed to take his seat. The President made his move. He nominated a man as different from Marshall as George Bush differs from Mahatma Gandhi. He nominated a man whose most striking characteristic seems to be that of satisfied self-hatred, a man whose public condemnation of his sister strikingly revealed his attitude toward the poor and the weak. For some, the issue became Black manhood or the sentimentalized biography of Clarence Thomas. They focused upon who the candidate was rather than what he has done and will do. This was identity politics taken to its lowest level. On the American Right, however, there was more clarity. Among those who detested Thurgood Marshall and who generally despise Black men there was a willingness to promote Clarence Thomas because Clarence Thomas was not the point: The point is to homogenize the Supreme Court. If someone with Black skin will serve that purpose, then fine! But we, the people, must not yield to judgment without representation. If we yield, there will be no justice. And without justice, believe me, there will be no peace.”

“Richard Epstein's book, Takings: Private Property and the Power of the Eminent Domain, is the bible of the "ownership society" of the cowboy capitalists of the 21st century. It is also the bible of judges like Clarence Thomas and Antonio Scalia who have used Epstein's philosophy of takings to undo the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and alter laws based on the public trust doctrine.”

“My history with the Thomas case is a long one. In the early 1990s, along with my then-colleague at The Wall Street Journal Jane Mayer, I spent almost three years re-reporting every aspect of the Hill-Thomas imbroglio for a book on the subject, Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas. Quickly, we uncovered a pattern: Clarence Thomas had, in fact, a clear habit of watching and talking about pornography, which, while not improper on its face, was at the heart of Hill's allegations of sexual harassment. She testified that at the Department of Education and the EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission], where she worked for Thomas, he had persisted in unwelcome sex talk at work. Often, he'd called her into his office to listen to him describe scenes from porn films featuring Long Dong Silver and women with freakishly large breasts.”

“[After denying Anita Hill's testimony, Thomas challenged the Senate committee considering his Supreme Court appointment to investigate further] His bluff wasn't called. Many individuals we uncovered who knew about Thomas's habitual, erotically charged talk in the workplace were never contacted by the Senate Judiciary Committee or called as witnesses. We found three other women who had experiences with Thomas at the EEOC that were similar to Hill's, and four people who knew about his keen interest in porn but were never heard from publicly. The evidence that Thomas had perjured himself during the hearing was overwhelming.”

“He is a clown in blackface sitting on the Supreme Court. He gets me that angry. He doesn't belong there. Ande saw the movie 12 Years as a Slave, you know, they were raped. And he says they had dignity as slaves or— My parents lost everything that th middle of their lives, in their thirties. His business, my father's business, our home, our freedom and we're supposed to call that dignified? Marched out of our homes at gun point. I mean, this man does not belong on the Supreme Court. He is an embarrassment. He is a disgrace to America.”

“US Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas in particular has critiqued the complexity of federal Indian law several times. But as at least one commentator noted, when court justices critique the "complexity" of federal Indian law, it seems to precede a restriction on tribal authority.”

“For the evangelical left, those who suffer largely exist as mechanisms for others’ salvation, but not as beings with consciences of their own—or more precisely, they are allowed to have their own conscience if and only if it fits into their salvation model. Else, they can be considered as corrupted. The black man loses his “blackness,” which is a state of grace and nothing to do with skin color. Clarence Thomas isn’t “really” black but Bill Clinton is, in the same way that the Eucharist literally becomes the body of Christ.”

“If the Framers had wanted a constitution that evolved by judicial ruling, Thomas says, they could have stuck with the unwritten British constitution that governed the American colonists in just that way for 150 years before the Revolution. But Americans chose a written constitution, whose meaning, as the Framers and the state ratifying conventions understood it, does not change—and whose purpose remains, as the Preamble states, to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."”

“Bush's choice of Thomas caught most black leaders off guard. Few had the courage to say publicly that this was an act of cynical tokenism concealed by outright lies about Thomas being the most qualified candidate regardless of race. Thomas had an undistinguished record as a student (mere graduation from Yale Law School does not qualify one for the Supreme Court); he left thirteen thousand age discrimination cases dying on the vine for lack of investigation in his turbulent eight years at the EEOC; and his performance during his short fifteen months as an appellate court judge was mediocre. The very fact that no black leader could utter publicly that a black appointee for the Supreme Court was unqualified shows how captive they are to white racist stereotypes about black intellectual talent.”

“One wonders what this Court waits for. We failed to settle this dispute before the election, and thus provide clear rules. Now we again fail to provide clear rules for future elections. The decision to leave election law hidden beneath a shroud of doubt is baffling. By doing nothing, we invite further confusion and erosion of voter confidence. Our fellow citizens deserve better and expect more of us. I respectfully dissent.”

“The difference between me, along with most Black folks, and Clarence Thomas is that Thomas has decided to take his hurt feelings out on one of the most effective social justice policies in American history, while most Black people just learn to step over the low-account white folks clawing at our ankles. Most Black people strive to overcome racial injustice; Thomas was broken by it. Instead of blaming the white folks doing the oppressing, Thomas has decided to ally with them and blame the policy meant to break their exclusive access to power. He’s almost a tragic figure: a man who has adopted the white narrative about Black people so completely that he’s curdled into a mere spokesperson for that white narrative.”

“[Thomas admitted to Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, DC], after experiencing flu-like symptoms. It is not COVID related.”