Henry Louis Gates quotes

The sad truth is that the civil rights movement cannot be reborn until we identify the causes of black suffering, some of them self-inflicted. Why can't black leaders organize rallies around responsible sexuality, birth within marriage, parents reading to their children and students staying in school and doing homework?

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.

My father lived to be 97 and played bridge every day up to the end, so I've got a 50 percent chance of living a long life like him.

Patriotism is best exemplified through auto-critique. When you're willing to stand up within the group and say, 'It is wrong for Black people to be anti-Semitic,' or 'It is wrong for America to discriminate against persons of African descent and made them slaves and based its wealth upon free labor,' it's crucial to say that.

The sad truth is that without complex business partnerships between African elites and European traders and commercial agents, the slave trade to the New World would have been impossible, at least on the scale it occurred.

Patriotism is best exemplified through auto-critique.