“But the questioning for me started in the spring of 1970 after an unauthorized demonstration in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to "free the political prisoners." Why was I doing this rather than using my intellect? Perhaps I was empowered by the anger and relieved that I could now strike back at the faceless oppressor. But why was I conceding my intellect and rather fighting much like a brute? This I could not answer, except to say that I was tired of being restrained.”

— Clarence Thomas

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "But the questioning for me started in the spring of 1970 after an unauthorized demonstration in Cambridge, Massachusett…" by Clarence Thomas?

Clarence Thomas photo

Clarence Thomas 100

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States 1948

Related quotes

“O World, why do you wish to persecute me?
How do I offend you, when I intend
only to fix beauty in my intellect,
and never my intellect fix on beauty?”

Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651–1695) Nun, scholar and poet in New Spain

¿En perseguirme, mundo, qué interesas?
¿En qué te ofendo, cuando sólo intento
poner bellezas en mi entendimiento
y no mi entendimiento en las bellezas?
Sonnet 146, as translated by Edith Grossman in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Selected Works (2014)

“I would rather be free in my mind, and be locked up in a prison cell, than to be a coward and not be able to say what I want.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

Radio Interview, May 24 1999 http://www.geocities.jp/bobbby_b/mp3/F_07_3.MP3
1990s

“My question always was: why do people always cause so much pain to other people? Why does everybody look so hurt? When I started to paint I didn’t feel I had any message. My art was not an answer – it was a question.”

Gottfried Helnwein (1948) Austrian photographer and painter

Interview by Yuichi Konno, Yaso magazine, Japan, 2003

“I couldn't think. I couldn't remember. I was wound up like a spring and ready to bust. All I could see was the dead guy in the middle of the room and my gun. My gun! Somebody grabbed at my arm and hauled me upright and the questions started again. That was as much as I could take. I gave a hell of a kick and a fat face in a fedora pulled back out of focus and started to groan, all doubled up. Maybe I laughed, I don't know.”

Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) American writer

Vengeance is Mine! (1950)

“Previously I did not understand why I got no answer to my question; today I do not understand how I could believe I was capable of asking. But I didn’t really believe, I only asked.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

36
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

“In my life
Why do I smile
At people who I'd much rather kick in the eye?”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

from the 1984 song "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now"
From songs

“So in the spring of 1970, in a nihilistic fog, I prayed that I'd be relieved of the anger and the animosity that ate at my soul. I did not want to hate any more, and I had to stop before it totally consumed me. I had to make a fundamental choice. Do I believe in the principles of this country or not? After such angst, I concluded that I did. But the battle between passion and reason would continue, although abated, still intense.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

“I do not know why I chose one subject rather than another unless I believe them to be the best synthesis of my inner experience.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

quoted by Floyd Goodrich, in Edward Hopper, H. Abrams, New York 1971
1941 - 1967

“Now you see why I hate to leave my lab. It tires me out too much to have to do other people’s thinking for them.”

David Gerrold book When HARLIE Was One

Section 41 (p. 235)
When HARLIE Was One (1972)

“Frustrated? Yes. Why? Because it is impossible for me to be God — or the universal woman-and-man — or anything much. I am what I feel and think and do. I want to express my being as fully as I can because I somewhere picked up the idea that I could justify my being alive that way.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

1950 entry, quoted in Gayle Wurst, Voice and Vision: The Poetry of Sylvia Plath (1999), p. 158
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000)

Related topics