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

More quotes by Joycelyn Elders

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Handguns are a public health issue.
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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Doctor, I have more education than most white people.
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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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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... 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms.
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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But I'm saying we are loosing the people who are going to pay my social security. And that bothers me.
Joycelyn Elders
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You can't keep an ignorant population healthy.
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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Guns kill more teenagers than the other big killers - heart disease, cancer, and AIDS - combined.
Joycelyn Elders