The Supreme Courting Of Ayn Rand

"It was around this time that I read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Rand preached a philosophy of radical individualism that she called Objectivism. While I didn't fully accept its tenets, her vision of the world made more sense to me than that of my left-wing friends. "Do your own thing" was their motto, but now I saw that the individualism implicit in that phrase was both was going too far for a black man to do his thing by breaking with radical politics, which was what I now longed to do. I never went along with the militant separatism of the Black Muslims, but I their discipline and dignity. That was Daddy's way. He knew that to be truly free and participate fully in American life, poor blacks had to have the tools to do for themselves. This was the direction in which my political thinking was moving as my time at Holy Cross drew to an end. I went without saying that I was an individual: we are all individuals. The question was how much courage for everyone -- the government, the racists, the activists, the students, even Daddy -- to leave me alone so that I could finally start thinking for myself..."

Clarence Thomas (around 1968)


"...For lighter fare I treated myself to the western novels of Louis L'Amour, and I also reread The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, whose scathing criticisms of the dangers of centralized government impressed me even more after working in Washington."

Clarence Thomas (around 1982)
My Grandfather's Son