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My role on television is one of helping people reexamine the assumptions that they hold. I regard Dr. King. You would never hear me get up and speak without in some way, shape or form, referencing, Dr. King.

Tavis Smiley

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Tavis Smiley
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: September 13
Businessperson
Journalist
Radio Personality
Talk Show Host
Television Presenter
Television Producer
Gulfport
Mississippi
Form
Regard
Referencing
Without
Role
Smiley
Way
Hold
Assumptions
Never
Roles
Assumption
Would
Television
Shape
People
Hear
King
Speak
Shapes
Helping
Kings
Reexamine

More quotes by Tavis Smiley

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Sometimes rejection in life is really redirection.
Tavis Smiley
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There are really only two types of people. Either you're running scared or you're running free. I choose to run free, and you can, too, no matter what your circumstances in life.
Tavis Smiley
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Poverty and wealth inequality are a form of instability into the future.
Tavis Smiley
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Troubled times do call for troubled songs, songs that unsettle our souls and our spirits unapologetically.
Tavis Smiley
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Be careful about gossiping because loose lips really do sink ships.
Tavis Smiley
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I love my cross-sectioned, cross-cultural audience. Some of them are doing better than the average guy, but my audience has always been people who are struggling to stay in the middle class.
Tavis Smiley
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How do you grow up in the shadow of a guy - I want to talk about the movie in a second - but how do you grow up in the shadow of a guy who really is a legend in his own time?
Tavis Smiley
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The storm came. Lives were washed away. Ancient pains resurfaced. Now it is time for a sea of change.
Tavis Smiley
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Fear, fear, breeds hopelessness. When you're afraid, you don't know what to believe in, you don't know what to hold on to. You're struggling to find something to believe in.
Tavis Smiley
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Struggling to stay in the middle class, and I love that. That's me and my dad and my family.
Tavis Smiley
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I love the fight. I don't - it's not a negative, it's a positive, and I love the challenge. There's that little part of me that I love proving someone wrong in that way when they have an image of me or something, or they think they have me figured out or they think I'm a certain way.
Tavis Smiley
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The City of Angels is a microcosm of the world, and so living in L.A. makes me feel like a citizen of the world.
Tavis Smiley
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We come to know who we really are in life during the dark and difficult and desolate days of our journey.
Tavis Smiley
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I fear that we are living in a society, living in a world where forgiving people is becoming more and more difficult to do.
Tavis Smiley
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I believe if we make black America better, we make all of America better.
Tavis Smiley
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To be clear, the gap between the have gots and the have nots is widening. In this most multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic America ever, that concerns me.
Tavis Smiley
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There are enough bad films coming out of this town already without the process being more democratized. I'm a guy who loves democracy. I'm all for democratizing any process, but I think there is a price to pay for that.
Tavis Smiley
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When I'm at the premiere and I see the film in its entirety, I forget plot, I forget the story, I forget what my character goes through, because I really do just let it go.
Tavis Smiley
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Even in the era of the first black president, racism is still the most intractable issue in USA. Regarding poverty, half of all Americans are either in or near poverty. Poverty is certainly worse for African-Americans now than it was during King's lifetime.
Tavis Smiley
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[John Carlos] has spent much of his life since that time as a dedicated human rights advocate and public speaker, and he is out now with a wonderful new text a memoir, in fact.
Tavis Smiley