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I feel blessed to be in the broadcast business for 20 years. I believe that when you're this blessed, you have an obligation to pay it forward. That's what life is all about ultimately.

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
Life
Blessed
Forward
Pay
Business
Feel
Feels
Broadcast
Believe
Obligation
Years
Ultimately

More quotes by Tavis Smiley

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When you work for something, you appreciate it more. So what are y'all going to do with all the opportunities you inherited that you didn't have to work for?
Tavis Smiley
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I don't think I'd live anything over, even though I've made a lot of mistakes. I have learned how to see failure as a friend. So, I'm not one to live a life of regrets. I try to learn from my mistakes, but I'll take my life the way it is.
Tavis Smiley
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I'm always fascinated by people from the Midwest, because it is so different than Hollywood, who discover at some point that they want to be in Hollywood.
Tavis Smiley
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Every community has a Martin Luther King Boulevard. It's the cornerstone we all know. It's not just a street or boulevard, but a place where Walmart stands together with your community to make every day better.
Tavis Smiley
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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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Poverty and wealth inequality are a form of instability into the future.
Tavis Smiley
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Be careful about gossiping because loose lips really do sink ships. Now that I'm in the broadcast business, and people talk about me, I know what it feels like to be the victim of gossip.
Tavis Smiley
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I wanted to be a theater actress, and initially, I wanted to work in musical theater
Tavis Smiley
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Losing teaches you something
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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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 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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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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That is still the case in this country for too many students, the soft bigotry of low expectations. If you don't expect them to learn, if you don't expect them to succeed - then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Tavis Smiley
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He was a humanist then, he's a humanist now, and to my mind John Carlos is an authentic American hero.
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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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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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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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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The storm came. Lives were washed away. Ancient pains resurfaced. Now it is time for a sea of change.
Tavis Smiley