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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
Judge
Lawyer
Politician
Pin Point
Georgia
Society
Extremes
Vest
Power
Congress
Vests
Doe
Result
Befall
Might
Constitution
Expansion
Every
Authority
Followed
Would
Approach
Federal
Protect
Extreme
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Unwarranted

More quotes by Clarence Thomas

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I'm not an Uncle Tom. . .. I'm going to be here for 40 years. For those who don't like it, get over it.
Clarence Thomas
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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
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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
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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
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A theory deeply etched in our law [is that] a free society prefers to punish the few who abuse the rights of free speech after they break the law rather than to throttle them and all others beforehand.
Clarence Thomas
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Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot.
Clarence Thomas
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While the romanticized ideal of universal public education resonates with the cognoscenti who oppose vouchers, poor urban families just want the best education for their children, who will certainly need it to function in our high-tech and advanced society.
Clarence Thomas
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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.
Clarence Thomas
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I actually think that I have been fortunate to have had misfortune, because the response, in responding to the misfortune, you develop in your own life, you develop sort of the tools you need to continue on, or to do better.
Clarence Thomas
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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.
Clarence Thomas
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A judge should be evaluated by whether he faithfully upholds his oath to God, not to the people, to the state or to the Constitution.
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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And I thank God I believe in God, or I would probably be enormously angry right now.
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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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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The truth of the matter is we have become more interested in designer jeans and break dancing than we are in obligations and responsibilities.
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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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
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Religious liberty is about freedom of action in matters of religion generally, and the scope of that liberty is directly correlated to the civil restraints placed upon religious practice.
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