Henry Louis GatesWhat's fascinated me from the time I was a little kid was the way we construct our lives through stories.372Time
Henry Louis GatesEver since I watched 'Roots,' I've dreamed of tracing my African ancestry and helping other people do the same.351Humanity
Henry Louis GatesYou can say I had a severe case of 'Roots' envy. I wanted to be like Alex Haley, and I wanted to be able to... do my family tree back to the slave ship and then reverse the Middle… ▶364Reflection
Henry Louis GatesBrazil is the second blackest nation in the world.375Humor
Henry Louis GatesThe historical basis for the gap between the black middle class and underclass shows that ending discrimination, by itself, would not eradicate black poverty and dysfunction. We a… ▶354Reading
Henry Louis GatesIt's not white versus black any more, it's haves versus have-nots. Unless the black middle-classes unite to promote the interests of the black underclass, tension between them is … ▶354Thought
Henry Louis GatesMy 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.365Life
Henry Louis GatesEverything my mother and father did was designed to put me where I am. ✨ The biggest brother. Interview with Sean O'Hagan, www.theguardian.com. July 20, 2003.321Reflection
Henry Louis GatesThere haven't been fundamental structural changes in America. There's been a very important symbolic change and that is the election of Barack Obama. But the only black people who… ▶344Humanity
Henry Louis GatesMy family and our neighbors and friends thought of Africa and its Africans as extensions of the stereotyped characters that we saw in movies and on television in films such as 'Ta… ▶311Thought
Henry Louis GatesColor 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.323Time
Henry Louis GatesI have no plans to slow down.378Philosophy
Henry Louis GatesWherever you go in the history of America, there have been Black people making contributions, but their contributions have been obscured, lost, buried. ✨ Harvard professor H… ▶302Humanity
Henry Louis GatesI want to get into the educational DNA of American culture. I want 10 percent of the common culture, more or less, to be black.335Reflection
Henry Louis GatesIn Ethiopia, the black people became Christians 1700 years ago, hundreds of years before Northern Europe turned to Christianity... And here, most of the saints are black.368Humanity
Henry Louis GatesWhen Europeans came upon real ruined cities they refused to believe that they had been built by Africans. Here the past has been distorted and denied.358Time
Henry Louis GatesIf America has a civic religion, the First Amendment is its central article of faith.358Hope
Henry Louis GatesIf 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 th… ▶271ThoughtTime
Henry Louis GatesThe African American's relationship to Africa has long been ambivalent, at least since the early nineteenth century, when 3,000 black men crowded into Bishop Richard Allen's Afric… ▶282Reading
Henry Louis GatesFirst 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 A… ▶304Philosophy
Henry Louis GatesIf Martin Luther King came back, he'd say we need another civil rights movement built on class not race. ✨ The biggest brother. Interview with Sean O'Hagan, www.theguar… ▶304Philosophy
Henry Louis GatesThere are just so many stories that are buried on family trees.316Thought
Henry Louis GatesPeople who own property feel a sense of ownership in their future and their society. They study, save, work, strive and vote. And people trapped in a culture of tenancy do not. 316HopeHumanityReading
Henry Louis GatesThe only people who live in a post-black world are four people who live in a little white house on Pennsylvania Avenue. The idea that America is post-racial or post-black because … ▶317HopeHumanityHumor
Henry Louis GatesIn fact, the class divide in the black community is now seen by some as a permanent aspect of our existence. ✨ The biggest brother. Interview with Sean O'Hagan, www.the… ▶328LifeTruth
Henry Louis GatesI want to be a figure for prison reform. I think that the criminal justice system is rotten.3410Thought
Henry Louis GatesPeople are afraid, and when people are afraid, when their pie is shrinking, they look for somebody to hate. They look for somebody to blame. And a real leader speaks to anxiety an… ▶295Humanity
Henry Louis GatesBecause 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.296Thought
Henry Louis GatesThere's a boom in genealogy now. With ancestry.com and other sites digitizing so many of the records, you can now find things in a few minutes that used to take months.3310Love
Henry Louis GatesYou notice patterns. White guests often are mortified - that word again - when they learn their ancestors owned slaves. But I've never had a black guest who was upset to learn abo… ▶231Humanity
