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The Constitution does not vest in Congress the authority to protect society from every bad act that might befall it....[I]f followed to its logical extreme, [this approach] would result in an unwarranted expansion of federal power.

Clarence Thomas

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Clarence Thomas
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: June 23
Associate Justice Of The Supreme Court Of The United States
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More quotes by Clarence Thomas

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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
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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.
Clarence Thomas
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The myths that are created about the South, about the way we grew up, about black people, are wrong.
Clarence Thomas
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It takes a person with a mission to succeed.
Clarence Thomas
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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
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I don't really have the luxury to be bitter. I don't have the luxury of having negative things in my life.
Clarence Thomas
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Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot.
Clarence Thomas
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You didn't think of angels as white or black. They were angels.
Clarence Thomas
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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
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I was smart enough to use pot without getting caught, and now I'm on the Supreme Court. If you were stupid enough to get caught, that's your problem. Your appeal is denied. This 40 year sentence just might teach you a lesson.
Clarence Thomas
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In my humble opinion, those who come to engage in debates of consequence, and who challenge accepted wisdom, should expect to be treated badly. Nonetheless, they must stand undaunted. That is required. And that should be expected. For it is bravery that is required to secure freedom.
Clarence Thomas
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Government cannot make us equal it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law.
Clarence Thomas
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I love being around people who work with their hands, who do the hard things to keep our country going. They're just my kind of people.
Clarence Thomas
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The job of a judge is to figure out what the law says, not what he wants it to say. There is a difference between the role of a judge and that of a policy maker... Judging requires a certain impartiality.
Clarence Thomas
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My grandfather could barely read. My grandmother had a sixth-grade education. They were people who were industrious. They were frugal.
Clarence Thomas
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The White House said today that Judge Clarence Thomas, President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, had smoked marijuana while in college.
Clarence Thomas
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We've talked more about civil rights after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than we talked about it before 1964.
Clarence Thomas
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If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything-and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.
Clarence Thomas
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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.
Clarence Thomas
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[T]he courts are so willing to assume that anything that is predominantly black must be inferior.... The mere fact that a school is black does not mean that it is the product of an unconstitutional violation.
Clarence Thomas