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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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Joycelyn Elders
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: August 13
Former Surgeon General Of The United States
Pediatrician
Physician
Politician
Scientist
Minnie Joycelyn Elders
Never
Store
Think
Doctor
Thinking
Stores
Doctors
Clerk
Seen
Clerks
Black
Elders
Didn
Clothings
Even
Clothing

More quotes by 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
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Once I had a professor say to me, You know you have as much education as a lot of white people. I answered, Doctor, I have more education than most white people.
Joycelyn Elders
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Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms.
Joycelyn Elders
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The best contraceptive in the world is a good education.
Joycelyn Elders
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You can't educate people that are not healthy. But you certainly can't keep them healthy if they're not educated.
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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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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[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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We can begin to address the issue of guns by teaching our young people how to deal with situations in nonviolent ways. Someone said to me the other day, What our adolescents need is not so much health care, but healthy caring, and I agree. Parents and churches need to provide that. Curricula in our schools [need to] provide that.
Joycelyn Elders
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If men went through menopause, we'd know everything about it, but we still don't even know if we should be taking hormones.
Joycelyn Elders
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Marijuana is beneficial to many patients
Joycelyn Elders
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I always say my God will take care of me. If it's my time I'll go, and if it's not I won't. I feel that He really has a lot of important things for me to do. And He's going to make sure that I'm here to do them.
Joycelyn Elders
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Handguns are a public health issue.
Joycelyn Elders
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We know that more than seventy to eighty percent of women masturbate, and ninety percent of men masturbate, and the rest lie.
Joycelyn Elders
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Doctor, I have more education than most white people.
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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My biggest challenge is to educate the American people, to make access to health care available for all, and to make sure that prevention plays a big part in health care. In the case of guns, prevention means we prevent homicides and devastating, expensive gun injuries by preventing those who shouldn't have guns from getting their hands on guns.
Joycelyn Elders
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It is often easier for our children to obtain a gun than it is to find a good school.
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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[On masturbation:] I think that it is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught.
Joycelyn Elders