Quote

You can't keep an ignorant population healthy.

Joycelyn Elders

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Joycelyn Elders
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: August 13
Former Surgeon General Of The United States
Pediatrician
Physician
Politician
Scientist
Minnie Joycelyn Elders
Ignorant
Population
Healthy
Keep

More quotes by Joycelyn Elders

Image
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
Image
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
Image
We know that more than seventy to eighty percent of women masturbate, and ninety percent of men masturbate, and the rest lie.
Joycelyn Elders
Image
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
Image
Guns kill more teenagers than the other big killers - heart disease, cancer, and AIDS - combined.
Joycelyn Elders
Image
If you say children wouldn't know anything about masturbation on their own, you've never changed a little boy's diaper.
Joycelyn Elders
Image
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
Image
You can't educate people that are not healthy. But you certainly can't keep them healthy if they're not educated.
Joycelyn Elders
Image
[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
Image
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
Image
Doctor, I have more education than most white people.
Joycelyn Elders
Image
Marijuana is beneficial to many patients
Joycelyn Elders
Image
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
Image
[On masturbation:] I think that it is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught.
Joycelyn Elders
Image
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
Image
... black women have always found that in the social order of things we're the least likely to be believed--by anyone.
Joycelyn Elders
Image
Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms.
Joycelyn Elders
Image
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
Image
The best contraceptive in the world is a good education.
Joycelyn Elders
Image
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