Clarence Thomas on Courage

Justice Clarence Thomas:

Class of 2024, it is an honor to address you. Though I completed my formal education many years ago, I think there are some things that endure despite the passage of time.  Courage is one of those things.

As Winston Churchill wrote almost a century ago, “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because…it is the quality which guarantees all others.”

In your young lives, you will face challenges: personal, professional, even spiritual. How will you deal with them?

I encourage you to think of the people in your lives who have shown courage in the face of adversity and challenges.

When I think of the people in my own life who demonstrated courage, I think first and foremost of my grandfather, the greatest man I have ever known.  At the beginning of my career here in Washington, D.C., I sought his advice and counsel.

It was during my first encounters with the onslaught of criticism and public attacks. I asked my grandfather how I should handle it. His words were as wise as they were pithy: "Son, you have to stand up for what you believe in." 

Over the years, I have seen those who know what is right, but who are afraid to stand up when it would cost them. We all know it is right to stand up for a friend who is being bullied. But, how many of us will choose to say nothing out of fear? It takes courage to do something despite the risks.

No wonder my good friend Dennis Prager likes to say, “Courage is the rarest of…human traits.”

Courage also comes into play as we deal with ourselves, with our problems or faults. It takes courage to be honest with ourselves. It is so much easier and convenient to blame our shortcomings or problems on someone (or something) else. It takes courage to be honest and to do as Alexander Solzhenitsyn said: “Live not by lies.” Or put more positively: “Live a life of truth and honesty.”

From time to time, I have reflected on the people who were the most important in my own life and taught me much about courage. My grandparents are the first in my thoughts. But there were others.

My nuns, who taught me in school, also had courage.  They were honest to a fault and steadfast. These Irish immigrants had left their homeland and come to the segregated South to teach black children.  And for this, they were often subjected to vitriol. It took courage to step into a classroom with forty mostly poor black children and get them to learn and to believe that they could learn — and that there was a reason to do so.

One of these nuns, my eighth grade teacher, terrified me as a student but became a very dear friend in my adult life. She passed away at the age of one hundred. I once asked her how she and her fellow nuns were able to get us to do so many difficult things. She said, without the slightest hesitation: Because we lived with you and you knew we loved you. She would never have described herself as courageous, but she was. 

Throughout history, people have had to find those principles, beliefs, or people for whom they were willing to die. Then, in turn, for which and for whom they were willing to live.

I think of those who fight our wars, respond to our emergencies, or who work difficult and taxing jobs to care for their families.

In that vein, I also think of my grandparents who willingly sacrificed so that my brother and I could live and prosper. Without complaint, they found that quiet courage to take on a commitment that would consume the remainder of their lives and much of their quite modest resources.

It is profoundly humbling to think of what they did and the constant courage it required. Is there anything for which you would go through that much difficulty? Do you have the will and the courage to prepare educationally, morally, and intellectually to address the myriad challenges that you will face?

In this world of social media and shaming and other personal attacks, will you have the courage of your convictions to stand up for what you believe in? 

There are challenges coming your way. As I have so often had to do in my own life, I pray that each of you will have the wisdom to know what is right and the courage to do it.

I’m Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, for Prager University.