"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.'"

Life

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Insight & Reflection

When Henry Louis Gates speaks about life, it invites us to pause and reflect on our own journey. How often do we consider the subtle impacts of life in our daily lives? This thought-provoking perspective challenges conventional wisdom and encourages a deeper understanding of ourselves.

About Henry Louis Gates

Henry Louis Gates Jr., popularly known by his childhood nickname "Skip", is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is a trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. He rediscovered the earliest known African-American novels and has published extensively on the recognition of African-American literature as part of the Western canon.

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Editorial Note: This quote is curated and fact-checked by the Quotes Archive Editorial Team. Verified Literature Specialist.

More by Henry Louis Gates

"The 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 a man I admire, Barack Obama, is president of the United States, is a joke. And I hope no one will even wonder about this crazy fiction again."

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"First 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 African American community. Look - no white racist makes you get pregnant when you are a black teenager."

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"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."

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More about Life

"The richness of existence is found in simple harmonies, not superfluous splendors. Let this simple maxim guide your daily deeds — an essential principle for the reflective life."

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