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Given a choice between hearing my daughter say I'm pregnant or I used a condom, most mothers would get up in the middle of the night and buy them herself.

Joycelyn Elders

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Joycelyn Elders
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: August 13
Former Surgeon General Of The United States
Pediatrician
Physician
Politician
Scientist
Minnie Joycelyn Elders
Choice
Middle
Choices
Condom
Given
Pregnant
Mother
Mothers
Night
Witty
Used
Hearing
Would
Daughter

More quotes by Joycelyn Elders

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I want every child that's born in the world to be planned and wanted.
Joycelyn Elders
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[On masturbation:] I think that it is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught.
Joycelyn Elders
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As long as I was in Washington I never met anybody that I thought was good enough, who knew enough, or who loved enough to make sexual decisions for anybody else.
Joycelyn Elders
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You can't be what you don't see. I didn't think about being a doctor. I didn't even think about being a clerk in a store, I'd never seen a black clerk in a clothing store.
Joycelyn Elders
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You can't keep an ignorant population healthy.
Joycelyn Elders
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If I could be the condom queen and get every young person who engaged in sex to use a condom in the United States, I would weara crown on my head with a condom on it! I would!
Joycelyn Elders
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Judge Thomas was a man who had used the system to get where he wanted to be, but then felt that everyone else should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.
Joycelyn Elders
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Homicide, often involving guns, is a disease that is the leading cause of death for young black men, and the second-leading cause of death for all people aged fifteen to twenty-four. That makes it the leading health issue, particularly when guns are used in combination with drugs and alcohol. And the statistics show that is most often the case.
Joycelyn Elders
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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 unhealthy images from daily life and confusion about right and wrong.
Joycelyn Elders
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Handguns are a public health issue.
Joycelyn Elders
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[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 got a bucket with six holes shot through it, [and] you plug up five, you've still got a leaky bucket.
Joycelyn Elders
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Guns kill more teenagers than the other big killers - heart disease, cancer, and AIDS - combined.
Joycelyn Elders
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Gun owners would have to be evaluated by how they scored on written and firing tests, and have to pass the tests in order to own a gun. And I would tax the guns, bullets and the license itself very heavily.
Joycelyn Elders
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You can't educate a child who isn't healthy, and you can't keep a child healthy who isn't educated.
Joycelyn Elders
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We know that there are several predisposing factors to gun violence: poverty, lack of education, lack of good parenting, lack of jobs, living in an environment where violence is seen every day, all the time. And children being born to children are likely to have all of these predisposing factors.
Joycelyn Elders
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If you say children wouldn't know anything about masturbation on their own, you've never changed a little boy's diaper.
Joycelyn Elders
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The best contraceptive in the world is a good education.
Joycelyn Elders
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... black women have always found that in the social order of things we're the least likely to be believed--by anyone.
Joycelyn Elders
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Marijuana is beneficial to many patients
Joycelyn Elders
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Masturbation never got anybody pregnant, does not make anybody go crazy, and what we're about is preventing HIV in our bright young people.
Joycelyn Elders