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All Quotes by author - Henry Louis Gates

" All historians generalize from particulars. And often, if you look at a historian's footnotes, the number of examples of specific cases is very, very small. "

" All of the guests on 'Faces of America' were deeply moved by what we revealed about their ancestry. We were able to trace the ancestry of Native American writer Louise Erdrich back to 438 A.D. We found that Queen Noor is descended from royalty, and that's before she married King Hussein of Jordan. "

" America is the greatest nation ever founded. The ideals are the greatest ever espoused in human history, and we just need the country to live up to them. But what I worry about are the 1 million black men in the prison system. "

" A more humane form of capitalism is about the best I think we can get. Which might sound very reformist or conservative, but that's basically where I am. "

" Because Lincoln is so closely identified with what it is to be American, everyone wants to claim him, to rewrite his story to satisfy their own particular needs. "

" Brazil is the second blackest nation in the world. "

" But you see, our society is still trapped in this binary, black/white logic and that has had some very positive implications for our generation. It's had some very negative ones as well and one of the negative ones is that it creates enormous identity problems for people who have one black ancestor and all white ancestors for example. "

" Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice. "

" Color categories are on steroids in Latin America. I find that fascinating. It's very difficult for Americans, particularly African-Americans to understand or sympathize with. "

" Cuba is like going to a whole other planet. It's so different but it's so similar to the United States, to Miami. It's like a doppelgaenger. It's the mirror image. And I have no doubt, that once Cuba becomes democratic, that it will be the favorite tourist destination for Americans. "

" Diversity doesn't mean black and white only. "

" Dr. King's Nobel Prize had a more powerful transforming effect on him than I think he realized at the time. "

" Ever since I watched 'Roots,' I've dreamed of tracing my African ancestry and helping other people do the same. "

" Everything my mother and father did was designed to put me where I am. "

" 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. "

" For as long as I can remember, I have been passionately intrigued by 'Africa,' by the word itself, by its flora and fauna, its topographical diversity and grandeur; but above all else, by the sheer variety of the colors of its people, from tan and sepia to jet and ebony. "

" Fortunately, in President Obama, the child of an African and an American, we finally have a leader who is uniquely positioned to bridge the great reparations divide. "

" I believe in the law. I think we have a great system of justice. But I do think that system of justice has been corrupted by racism and classism. I think it's difficult for 'poor people' - poor white people, brown people - to be treated fairly before the law in the same way that upper-class people are. "

" I didn't feel particularly close to my father. "

" I don't think the riots derailed the civil rights movement. "

" I first learned that there were black people living in some place called other than the United States in the western hemisphere when I was a very little boy, and my father told me that when he was a boy about my age, he wanted to be an Episcopal priest, because he so admired his priest, a black man from someplace called Haiti. "

" If Martin Luther King came back, he'd say we need another civil rights movement built on class not race. "

" If you share a common ancestor with somebody, you're related to them. It doesn't mean that you're going to invite them to the family reunion, but it means that you share DNA. "

" I give a speech to the black freshmen at Harvard each year, and I say, 'You can like Mozart and ice hockey...' - and then I used to say 'golf,' but Tiger took over golf! - 'and Picasso and still be as black as the ace of spades.' "

" I have no plans to slow down. "

" I knew that there were black people in Africa, of course, unfortunately because of movies such as 'Tarzan.' "

" I'm a tech geek. "

" I'm a tech geek. Whenever I read about something new, I think to myself, How can I take this and make it black? "

" I'm looking forward to the time when we all look like Polynesians. "

Looking Forward

" In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black. In Brazil, it's almost as if one drop of white ancestry makes you white. "

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