153 Quotes by Henry Louis Gates

Instill respect for teachers.

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.'

No white racist makes you get pregnant when you are a black teenager.

The most ironic outcome of the black Civil Rights movement has been the creation of a new black middle class which is increasingly separate from the black underclass.

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.

Really, the values under which my generation was raised in the '50s were immigrant values even though we weren't immigrants. The greatest thing you could be was a college-educated Negro.

I'd say imagine that you wake up one morning when you're going through a midlife crisis. You're getting divorced. Your kids won't speak to you. Their faces are covered with acne, and you have to decide why you should get out of bed. That's the career you should pick. The one that keeps you going no matter what, even if your life is falling apart. That's how I feel about my career.

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.

I use African-American, because I teach African Studies as well as African-American Studies, so it's easy, neat and convenient. But sometimes, when you're in a barber shop, somebody'll say, "Did you see what that Negro did?" A lot of people slip in and out of different terms effortlessly, and I don't think the thought police should be on patrol.