I feel that we can't educate children who are not healthy, and we can't keep them healthy if they're not educated. There has to be a marriage between health and education. You can't learn if your mind is full of… — Joycelyn Elders Copy Share Image
Once I had a professor say to me, "You know you have as much education as a lot of white people." I answered, "Doctor,… — Joycelyn Elders Copy Share Image
[On masturbation:] I think that it is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught. — Joycelyn Elders Copy Share Image
I think we should have a very, very heavy tax on handguns and on bullets. — Joycelyn Elders Copy Share Image
“We have a multiheaded dragon in our midst that for too long has been waging a domestic war on our young, our poor, our elderly, and our underserved. The faces of this dragon sometimes manifest themselves as poverty, the source of the most pervasive health problem we have in America. Sometimes they manifest themselves as diseases such as AIDS, sometimes… — Joycelyn Elders Copy Share
... black women have always found that in the social order of things we're the least likely to be believed--by anyone. — Joycelyn Elders Copy Share Image
[We must] deal with all of the contributing factors to gun violence as a whole, because it's like a leaky bucket - if you've… — Joycelyn Elders Copy Share Image
You can't educate people that are not healthy. But you certainly can't keep them healthy if they're not educated. — Joycelyn Elders Copy Share Image
As long as I was in Washington I never met anybody that I thought was good enough, who knew enough, or who loved enough… — Joycelyn Elders Copy Share Image