Henry Louis Gates Quotes

Quotes about:

• The story of the African-American people is the story of the settlement and growth of America itself, a universal tale that all people should experience.

  Henry Louis Gates

  America, People, History

  61 Copy quote

• The first step toward tolerance is respect and the first step toward respect is knowledge.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Tolerance, Firsts, Steps

  25 Copy quote

• Let's face it - think of Africa, and the first images that come to mind are of war, poverty, famine and flies. How many of us really know anything at all about the truly great ancient African civilizations, which in their day, were just as splendid and glorious as any on the face of the earth?

  Henry Louis Gates

  War, Thinking, Civilization

  45 Copy quote

• If you don't tell your stories, other people will tell their story about you. It's important that we nurture and protect these memories. Things change. Existence means change.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Memories, Mean, People

  "Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. - The “The African Americans” Interview". Interview with Kam Williams, aalbc.com.

  12 Copy quote

• In America there is institutional racism that we all inherit and participate in, like breathing the air in this room - and we have to become sensitive to it.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Air, Breathing, America

  64 Copy quote

• The genius is making a way out of no way.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Genius, Way

  6 Copy quote

• There are just so many stories that are buried on family trees.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Tree, Stories, Buried

  7 Copy quote

• People are afraid, and when people are afraid, when their pie is shrinking, they look for somebody to hate. They look for somebody to blame. And a real leader speaks to anxiety and to fear and allays those fears, assuages anxiety.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Hate, Real, Pie

  "Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr". "The Tavis Smiley show", www.pbs.org. March 19, 2008.

  30 Copy quote

• The biggest surprise for me, without a doubt, was that the first black people who came to the United States weren't the 20 who arrived in Jamestown in 1619. All of us had been taught that. The first African came to Florida in 1513. And the huge shock is we know his name, Juan Garrido, and that he wasn't a slave. He was free!

  Henry Louis Gates

  Names, Florida, People

  "Gates Unlocked: Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The "The African Americans" Interview". Interview With Kam Williams, lasentinel.net. October 17, 2013.

  10 Copy quote

• Our society is driven today by so much ethnic discord. We have Black Lives Matter, which I praise and celebrate. We have the demagogues stereotyping Muslims and resurrecting racist stereotypes they used to visit on us. The larger goal is to show that we are all the same, we all come from Africa, and we all have the same larger family tree. It's about the fundamental unity of the human community.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Goal, Community, Tree

  "Black Ancestry Matters on 'Finding Your Roots'". Interview with Alexandra Phanor-Faury, www.ebony.com. January 26, 2016.

  27 Copy quote

• The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Inspirational, Black History, Truth Is

  23 Copy quote

• Wherever you go in the history of America, there have been Black people making contributions, but their contributions have been obscured, lost, buried.

  Henry Louis Gates

  America, People, Black

  "Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr". "The Tavis Smiley show", www.pbs.org. March 19, 2008.

  17 Copy quote

• I think that the roots of racism have always been economic, and I think people are desperate and scared. And when you're desperate and scared you scapegoat people. It exacerbates latent tendencies toward - well, toward racism or homophobia or anti-Semitism.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Thinking, Roots, Racism

  "Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr". "The Tavis Smiley Show", www.pbs.org. March 19, 2008.

  12 Copy quote

• In Ethiopia, the black people became Christians 1700 years ago, hundreds of years before Northern Europe turned to Christianity... And here, most of the saints are black.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Christian, Years, Europe

  23 Copy quote

• Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Art, Lynching, Justice

  Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (2014). “The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism”, p.30, Oxford University Press

  17 Copy quote

• My grandfather was coloured, my father was Negro, and I am Black.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Father, Black, Grandfather

  "The biggest brother". Interview with Sean O'Hagan, www.theguardian.com. July 20, 2003.

  4 Copy quote

• The truth is I would do my job for free! I love it every day. If you can possibly choose a vocation that's an avocation, a job that's really a hobby, then you'll be way ahead of the game. You should not pick an occupation because your think your parents want you to do it, or because you think it's the noble thing to do. You should only pick a job because it turns you on.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Jobs, Thinking, Games

  "Gates Unlocked: Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The "The African Americans" Interview". Interview with Kam Williams, lasentinel.net. October 17, 2013.

  16 Copy quote

• Mama and I would go to a funeral and she'd stand up to read the dead person's eulogy. She made the ignorant and ugly sound like scholars and movie stars, turned the mean and evil into saints and angels. She knew what people had meant to be in their hearts, not what the world had forced them to become. She knew the ways in which working too hard for paltry wages could turn you mean and cold, could kill the thing that made you laugh.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Stars, Mean, Angel

  7 Copy quote

• We have to stop making excuses. One of the things that I'm careful to show is the horrendous effects of institutional and structural racism, but in the end, you can't wait for white man or a Black man to come riding in on a white horse to save you. We have to save ourselves, and that's the lesson of "The African Americans."

  Henry Louis Gates

  Horse, Men, White Man

  "Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr". "The Tavis Smiley Show", www.pbs.org. October 21, 2013.

  13 Copy quote

• It's important to debunk the myths of Africa being this benighted continent civilized only when white people arrived. In fact, Africans had been creators of culture for thousands of years before. These were very intelligent, subtle and sophisticated people, with organized societies and great art.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Art, Intelligent, Years

  10 Copy quote

• I want to be remembered as someone who tried to bring the story of our ancestors to the broadest possible audience. I want to be remembered as a man who loved his race.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Men, Race, Stories

  Source: pittsburghurbanmedia.com

  6 Copy quote

• You have to have a canon so the next generation can come along and explode it.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Generations, Next, Canon

  16 Copy quote

• The African American's relationship to Africa has long been ambivalent, at least since the early nineteenth century, when 3,000 black men crowded into Bishop Richard Allen's African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia to protest noisily a plan to recolonize free blacks in Africa.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Men, Philadelphia, Long

  17 Copy quote

• We can revolutionize the attitude of inner city brown and black kids to learning. We need a civil rights movement within the African-American community.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Attitude, Kids, Rights

  19 Copy quote

• First we have to recognize that the cause of poverty is both structural and behavioral. And the first thing about the behavior part is that we need a moral revolution within the African American community. Look - no white racist makes you get pregnant when you are a black teenager.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Teenager, White, Community

  "35 Million Ways to Be Black". Interview with Adam Hochschild, www.motherjones.com. March 14, 2007.

  6 Copy quote

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