Clarence Thomas on Courage | 5-Minute Videos
In your life, you will face difficult challenges: personal, professional, even spiritual. How will you deal with them? Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States Clarence Thomas offers some pertinent advice to the next generation in PragerU’s 2024 commencement address.
Script:
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.
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