Anita Hill Quotes

You can't always expect a certain result, but you can expect to do your best.

It would have been more comfortable to remain silent.

I work every day to live up to my mother's model. She was a very proud woman. And she really prepared me to go off into the world as a proud daughter.

During this period at the Department of Education, my working relationship with Judge Thomas was positive.

The experience of testifying and the aftermath have changed my life.

Testifying has helped me understand that one individual's behavior and actions make a difference. That my actions are important to people other than myself.

Because I was extremely uncomfortable talking about sex with him at all and particularly in such a graphic way, I told him that I did not want to talk about these subjects.

What I wanted was for everyone listening to understand that these things mattered - not necessarily for me, but in this particular forum they mattered in terms of whether of not we were getting a person who should sit on the Supreme Court.

In July of 1983, I left Washington, DC area and have had minimal contact with Judge Clarence Thomas since.

I became the messenger who had to be killed.

I was aware, however, that telling at any point in my career could adversely affect my future career.

I'm not sure I can say there is a clean line between me as an individual and me as a lawyer.

I am hopeful that others who have suffered sexual harassment will not become discouraged by my experience, but instead will find the strength to speak out about this serious problem.

Well, of course it was a very trying time for me, and fortunately I had a lot of people who were supportive. A lot of people who were writing and calling and saying they were praying for me. Some people sent me Scripture, and that helped.

We have a history of gender and racial bias on our court that continues to undermine the system. Excluding individuals based on race is antagonistic to the pursuit of justice.

I think, though, as African-American women, we are always trained to value our community even at the expense of ourselves, and so we attempt to protect the African-American community.

I resent the idea that people would blame the messenger for the message, rather than looking at the content of the message itself.

If you think about the way the hearings were structured, the hearings were really about Thomas' race and my gender.

But I think it would be irresponsible for me not to say what I really believe in my heart to be true - that there are some serious inequities that we face as women and that we can work to address these inequities.

We need to turn the question around to look at the harasser, not the target. We need to be sure that we can go out and look anyone who is a victim of harassment in the eye and say, 'You do not have to remain silent anymore.

Most of us have everything we need to get through a crisis; we just have to tap into it.