Clarence Thomas

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

I do think that our freedoms are at risk.

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.

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.

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.

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