I had manufactured artificial goals as a means of motivating myself, using my longing for money, cars, and other material possessions to create a fal… - Clarence Thomas

Merely because I was black, it seemed, I was supposed to listen to Hugh Maskela instead of Carole King, just as I was expected to be a radical, not a conservative. I no longer cared to play that game ... The black people I knew came from different places and backgrounds - social, economic, even ethnic - yet the color of our skin was somehow supposed to make us identical in spite of our differences. I didn't buy it. Of course we had all experienced racism in one way or another, but that did not mean we had to think alike

Ronald Reagan isn't the problem. Former president Jimmy Carter was not the problem. The lack of black leadership is the problem

I will not cataloge my opinions to which there have been objections since they are a matter of public record. But I must note in passing that I can't help but wonder if some of my critics can read.