Joycelyn Elders famous quotes

It is often easier for our children to obtain a gun than it is to find a good school.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Children #School #Gun

We really need to get over this love affair with the fetus and start worrying about children.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Children #Worry #Choices

You can't educate people that are not healthy. But you certainly can't keep them healthy if they're not educated.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#People #Healthy #Educated

Health is more than the absence of disease. Health is about jobs and employment, education, the environment, and all of those things that go into making us healthy.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Jobs #Healthy #Employment

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.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Long #Decision #Good Enough

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.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#People #Community #Empowerment

We know that more than seventy to eighty percent of women masturbate, and ninety percent of men masturbate, and the rest lie.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Lying #Men #Ninety

... if you're poor and ignorant, with a child, you're a slave. Meaning that you're never going to get out of it. These women are in bondage to a kind of slavery that the 13th Amendment just didn't deal with. The old master provided food, clothing and health care to the slaves because he wanted them to get up and go to work in the morning. And so on welfare: you get food, clothing and shelter--you get survival, but you can't really do anything else. You can't control your life.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Morning #Children #Ignorant

As a Christian, as an individual, as a doctor, I am absolutely opposed to the death penalty.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Christian #Death Penalty #Individual

If I could be the "condom queen" and get every young person who engaged in sex to use a condom in the United States, I would weara crown on my head with a condom on it! I would!
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Birth #Condom

... black women have always found that in the social order of things we're the least likely to be believed--by anyone.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#African American #Black #Black Women

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.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Men #Judging #Conservatism

Marijuana is beneficial to many patients
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Marijuana #Patient #Beneficial

The best contraceptive in the world is a good education.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#World #Sexuality #Good Education

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.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#God #Important #Care

If you say children wouldn't know anything about masturbation on their own, you've never changed a little boy's diaper.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Children #Boys #Littles

If men went through menopause, we'd know everything about it, but we still don't even know if we should be taking hormones.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Men #Should #Hormones

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.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Children #Awful #Easier

Handguns are a public health issue.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Issues #Public Health #Handguns

You can't keep an ignorant population healthy.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Healthy #Ignorant #Population

If you can't control your reproduction, you can't control your life.
-- Joycelyn Elders

But I'm saying we are loosing the people who are going to pay my social security. And that bothers me.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Stupid #Humorous #People

I want every child that's born in the world to be planned and wanted.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Children #World #Want

Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Abstinence #Condom #Vow

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.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Thinking #Doctors #Black

I've heard Eric Clapner, ... I think it was a wonderful thing that Eric Clapner the musician did...So I think that's the wonderful part about it, but listen - I like Eric Clapner!
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Thinking #Musician #Eric

The evidence is overwhelming that ***** 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, ***** is less toxic than many of the drugs that physicians prescribe every day.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Pain #Cancer #Marijuana

You can't educate a child who isn't healthy, and you can't keep a child healthy who isn't educated.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Children #Healthy #Educated

Doctor, I have more education than most white people.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Doctors #White #People

Given a choice between hearing my daughter say "I'm pregnant" or "I used a condom", most mothers would get up in the middle of the night and buy them herself.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Mother #Daughter #Witty

I want to make it as hard as possible. Gun owners would have to be evaluated by how they scored on written and firing tests, and have to pass the tests in order to own a gun. And I would tax the guns, bullets and the license itself very heavily.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Gun #Order #Bullets

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."
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Teaching #Doctors #White

I'm against abstinence programs because I really consider "abstinence only" child abuse.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Children #Abuse #Only Child

[On masturbation:] I think that it is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Thinking #Taught #Sexuality

Masturbation never got anybody pregnant, does not make anybody go crazy, and what we're about is preventing HIV in our bright young people.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Sex #Crazy #People

We've tried ignorance for a thousand years. It's time we try education.
-- Joycelyn Elders

#Ignorance #Years #Trying