Joycelyn Elders Quotes
-
I'm against abstinence programs because I really consider "abstinence only" child abuse.
→ -
Masturbation never got anybody pregnant, does not make anybody go crazy, and what we're about is preventing HIV in our bright young people.
→ -
We know that more than seventy to eighty percent of women masturbate, and ninety percent of men masturbate, and the rest lie.
→ -
Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms.
→ -
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."
→ -
You can't educate a child who isn't healthy, and you can't keep a child healthy who isn't educated.
→ -
Health is more than absence of disease; it is about economics, education, environment, empowerment, and community. The health and well being of the people is critically dependent upon the health system that serves them. It must provide the best possible health with the least disparities and respond equally well to everyone.
→ -
Guns are far too accessible and too readily available. There are over 200 million guns in our society - and that's just the legal ones, the ones we know about. Every ten seconds, another gun is produced. And every fourteen minutes, some person in America dies from gun-inflicted action.
→ -
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.
→ -
How do you get rid of the trash? It's out there in society, it's going on every day. You can educate children an awful lot easier than you can get rid of the trash.
→ -
Nobody with a criminal record would ever be allowed to buy a gun. All assault weapons would be banned, completely. And everybody who still possesses a gun license would receive mandatory education and training by professionals on how to handle a gun. After all, I can't drive my car until I pass a test proving I know how to handle a car.
→ -
Handguns are a public health issue.
→ -
Judge Thomas was a man who had used the system to get where he wanted to be, but then felt that everyone else should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.
→ -
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.
→ -
But I'm saying we are loosing the people who are going to pay my social security. And that bothers me.
→ -
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
I always say my God will take care of me. If it's my time I'll go, and if it's not I won't. I feel that He really has a lot of important things for me to do. And He's going to make sure that I'm here to do them.
→ -
As a Christian, as an individual, as a doctor, I am absolutely opposed to the death penalty.
→ -
... black women have always found that in the social order of things we're the least likely to be believed--by anyone.
→ -
If you say children wouldn't know anything about masturbation on their own, you've never changed a little boy's diaper.
→ -
I've pretty much always used my positions as a bully pulpit. What that means is strongly advocating for the things I feel are really important. Gun violence, to me, is the highest-priority public-health issue, and I have to make sure Congress is aware of it, the American people are aware of it, the president is aware of it, and that we all begin together to develop policies to exterminate the disease - the epidemic, really - of gun violence.
→ -
You can't educate people that are not healthy. But you certainly can't keep them healthy if they're not educated.
→ -
The evidence is overwhelming that marijuana can relieve certain types of pain, nausea, vomiting and other symptoms caused by such illnesses as multiple sclerosis, cancer and AIDS - or by the harsh drugs sometimes used to treat them. And it can do so with remarkable safety. Indeed, marijuana is less toxic than many of the drugs that physicians prescribe every day.
→ -
Doctor, I have more education than most white people.
→ -
We know that there are several predisposing factors to gun violence: poverty, lack of education, lack of good parenting, lack of jobs, living in an environment where violence is seen every day, all the time. And children being born to children are likely to have all of these predisposing factors.
→ -
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.
→ -
Who is the NRA anyway? They are usually middle-income people who only think of themselves, who want to have no government, really, except self-rule by themselves. I think that little cracks are starting to emerge in the NRA armor.
→ -
Guns kill more teenagers than the other big killers - heart disease, cancer, and AIDS - combined.
→ -
I think we should have a very, very heavy tax on handguns and on bullets.
→
Joycelyn Elders
- Born: August 13, 1933
- Occupation: Former Surgeon General of the United States
Related Authors
-
Monica Lewinsky Television Actor -
Barack Obama 44th U.S. President -
Rebecca Lee Crumpler Physician -
Hillary Clinton Former United States Secretary of State -
Judith Levine Author -
Richard Carmona Former United States Surgeon General -
Lani Guinier Law professor -
-
Ronald Reagan 40th U.S. President -
George H. W. Bush 41st U.S. President -
Thomas Jefferson 3rd U.S. President -
Anne Dudley Film Score Composer -
George W. Bush 43rd U.S. President -
Chelsea Clinton Journalist -
Susan L. Taylor Editor -
Antonia Novello Former Surgeon General of the United States -
David Satcher Former United States Surgeon General -
William J. Clinton 42nd U.S. President -
C. Everett Koop Former United States Surgeon General -
Vivek Murthy Surgeon General of the United States