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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
Seen
Clerks
Black
Elders
Didn
Clothings
Even
Clothing
Never
Store
Think
Doctor
Thinking
Stores
Doctors
Clerk

More quotes by 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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Doctor, I have more education than most white people.
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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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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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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I want every child that's born in the world to be planned and wanted.
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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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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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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You can't keep an ignorant population healthy.
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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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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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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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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Guns kill more teenagers than the other big killers - heart disease, cancer, and AIDS - combined.
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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... 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