Harry A. Blackmun Quotes

Affirmative action is the majority’s constitutional prerogative, through the use of the democratic process—and a means of taking responsibility for the community’s past wrongdoing.

I think that affirmative action programs can be very important.

Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them.

Affirmative action works but we're going to need to muster all our political resources if we are to keep it in place.

Where the effects of past discrimination persist, society has an obligation to take positive steps to overcome the legacy of injustice. Judiciously administered affirmative action programs in education and employment can be important expressions of the drive for solidarity and participation that is at the heart of true justice. Social harm calls for social relief.

You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others”, and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through the those gates.

I don't think we can undo the past. … We have to do the best we can now...I don't think quotas are a good idea...I don't think quotas are a good idea. I think it is a mistake to begin to assign quotas on the basis of religion or race or color, or nationality. … We are too mixed, this society of ours, to begin to divide ourselves on the basis of race or color.

I champion sensibly designed racial affirmative action, not because I have benefited from it personally - though I have. I support it because, on balance, it is conducive to the public good.

Affirmative action was never meant to be permanent, and now is truly the time to move on to some other approach.

It would be ridiculous for me to say anything negative regarding blacks having an equal opportunity on TV.

The third fallacy is that affirmative action doesn't work.

What is so remarkable about the success of affirmative action is that it has been accomplished despite the Justice Department and the policies of the federal government.

Judges cannot mandate Black or Hispanic excellence.

It is the policy of the state [of New York] that the American ideal of equality of opportunity requires that students ... be admitted to educational institutions without regard to race, color, religion, creed, or national origin.

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race

I am the perfect affirmative action baby.

In theory, affirmative action certainly has all the moral symmetry that fairness requires. It is reformist and corrective, even repentent and redemptive.

Affirmative action is the most important antidiscrimination technique ever instituted in the United States. It is the one tool that has had a demonstrable effect on discrimination... Affirmative action, by all statistical measures, has been the central ingredient to the creation of the black middle class.

I think the minority students that we admit to Harvard are every bit as meritorious as the white students that we admit.

Some kind of affirmative action is important in a democracy and for economic competitiveness and national security. The Army was the first to realize that you had to have desegregation of a military to have it working properly.

The University has a moral obligation to provide equal opportunities to women, minority persons and all other groups who work or seek to work at Harvard.

I don't know how one would define an affirmative-action hire. I ultimately do not know what role race played in my hiring.

Since governmental quotas expand bureaucratic power, provoke a backlash and are unfair to individuals, we need to find a better way to increase minority opportunities.

I don't want to have people brought in simply because they are black or Asian.

I don't want affirmative action - too much affirmative, not enough action.