« All You Quotes · Henry Louis Gates's Page
You Quotes by Henry Louis Gates
- In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black.
- Suffering does not necessarily ennoble you.
- You have to have a canon so the next generation can come along and explode it.
- One principle I've been fighting for that doesn't endear me to a lot of people is that black people can be just as complicated and…
- The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up.
- In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black. In Brazil, it's almost as if one drop of white ancestry makes you white.
- First we have to recognize that the cause of poverty is both structural and behavioral. And the first thing about the behavior part is that…
- I think that the roots of racism have always been economic, and I think people are desperate and scared. And when you're desperate and scared…
- All historians generalize from particulars. And often, if you look at a historian's footnotes, the number of examples of specific cases is very, very small.
- But you see, our society is still trapped in this binary, black/white logic and that has had some very positive implications for our generation. It's…
- Patriotism is best exemplified through auto-critique. When you're willing to stand up within the group and say, 'It is wrong for Black people to be…
- There's a boom in genealogy now. With ancestry.com and other sites digitizing so many of the records, you can now find things in a few…
- I give a speech to the black freshmen at Harvard each year, and I say, 'You can like Mozart and ice hockey...' - and then…
- If you share a common ancestor with somebody, you're related to them. It doesn't mean that you're going to invite them to the family reunion,…
- It's very lonely being a prominent black intellectual at an institution where you're the only prominent black intellectual. That was the model that was followed…
- Really, the values under which my generation was raised in the '50s were immigrant values even though we weren't immigrants. The greatest thing you could…
- So when you do your family tree and Margaret Cho does hers, and... Wanda Sykes and John Legend... we're adding to the database that scholars…
- Wherever you go in the history of America, there have been Black people making contributions, but their contributions have been obscured, lost, buried.
- You can find virtually everybody black back as far as the 1870 census. Why 1870? That's when the ex-slaves first have surnames. But if you…
- You can say I had a severe case of 'Roots' envy. I wanted to be like Alex Haley, and I wanted to be able to...…
- You have a diasporic black world, and the only way to put it back together again is symbolic. It's like Humpty Dumpty. Whoever could edit…
- You notice patterns. White guests often are mortified - that word again - when they learn their ancestors owned slaves. But I've never had a…
More You Quotes
- Dedicate yourself to the good you deserve and desire for yourself. Give yourself peace of mind. You deserve to be happy. You… — Hannah Arendt
- These are the fifties, you know. The disgusting, posturing fifties. — Hannah Arendt
- I love you, and because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore… — Pietro Aretino
- If you want to annoy your neighbors, tell the truth about them. — Pietro Aretino
- Flattery and deceit are the darlings of great men, and so with these men spread the butter on thick, if you want… — Pietro Aretino
- Having been a child actor, I remember how directors would trick me to get good performances out of me. I don't think… — Asia Argento
- In Italy the censor is very old and there are many judges and psychiatrists who analyse you. — Dario Argento
- I do think the heart can balance out the mind, if your heart is in a good place it can give you… — Alexis Arguello
- I believe more in precision, when you have the capability, like when you see a mosquito fly and you're able to hit… — Alexis Arguello
- I'd take precision any day over power; as far as being tactical you know you have to see what's going on in… — Alexis Arguello
- Haiti, Haiti, the further I am from you, the less I breathe. Haiti, I love you, and I will love you always.… — Jean-Bertrand Aristide
- When you care about human beings, you do your best to not repress and to not let people to repress and to… — Jean-Bertrand Aristide