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If America has a civic religion, the First Amendment is its central article of faith.
Henry Louis Gates
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Henry Louis Gates
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: September 16
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West Virginia
Henry Louis Gates
Democracy
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More quotes by Henry Louis Gates
We really invented the genre of tracing family trees and going back as far as we could on the paper trail. When the paper trail disappeared, we used DNA analysis. The technology was just being invented that allowed you to trace ancestry through DNA.
Henry Louis Gates
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 anti-Semitic,' or 'It is wrong for America to discriminate against persons of African descent and made them slaves and based its wealth upon free labor,' it's crucial to say that.
Henry Louis Gates
Politicians will not put forth programs aimed at the problems of poor blacks while their turnout remains so low.
Henry Louis Gates
Since the day Martin Luther King was killed, the black middle classes have almost quadrupled, but the percentage of black children living on or below the poverty line is almost the same.
Henry Louis Gates
In America there is institutional racism that we all inherit and participate in, like breathing the air in this room - and we have to become sensitive to it.
Henry Louis Gates
Let's face it - think of Africa, and the first images that come to mind are of war, poverty, famine and flies. How many of us really know anything at all about the truly great ancient African civilizations, which in their day, were just as splendid and glorious as any on the face of the earth?
Henry Louis Gates
What's fascinated me from the time I was a little kid was the way we construct our lives through stories.
Henry Louis Gates
Suffering does not necessarily ennoble you.
Henry Louis Gates
My father, if anything, first and last, was a man of words. He loved stories he didn't live for stories, exactly, but I think he lived through stories. I think, like many writers, he loved stories about things he had experienced as much as, if not more than, he loved the experiences themselves.
Henry Louis Gates
Most black leaders, whether left, right or center, from Frederick Douglas and Martin Delaney on in the middle of the 19th century have not even wondered about the merits of the capitalist system.
Henry Louis Gates
It's important to debunk the myths of Africa being this benighted continent civilized only when white people arrived. In fact, Africans had been creators of culture for thousands of years before. These were very intelligent, subtle and sophisticated people, with organized societies and great art.
Henry Louis Gates
My father lived to be 97 and played bridge every day up to the end, so I've got a 50 percent chance of living a long life like him.
Henry Louis Gates
We have to stop making excuses. One of the things that I'm careful to show is the horrendous effects of institutional and structural racism, but in the end, you can't wait for white man or a Black man to come riding in on a white horse to save you. We have to save ourselves, and that's the lesson of The African Americans.
Henry Louis Gates
The precise form of an individual's activity is determined, of course, by the equipment with which he came into the world. In other words, it is determined by his heredity.
Henry Louis Gates
So, the kind of precious memories about being black for my generation won't exist for my kids' and grandkids' generations unless we preserve them through fiction, through film, through comic books, and every other form of media we can possibly utilize to perpetuate the story of the great African-American people.
Henry Louis Gates
I want to be remembered as someone who tried to bring the story of our ancestors to the broadest possible audience. I want to be remembered as a man who loved his race.
Henry Louis Gates
Color categories are on steroids in Latin America. I find that fascinating. It's very difficult for Americans, particularly African-Americans to understand or sympathize with.
Henry Louis Gates
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 screwed up as white people. Our motives can be just as base and violent. Suffering does not necessarily ennoble you.
Henry Louis Gates
I don't think the riots derailed the civil rights movement.
Henry Louis Gates
The first step toward tolerance is respect and the first step toward respect is knowledge.
Henry Louis Gates
