Joycelyn Elders Quotes

My biggest challenge is to educate the American people, to make access to health care available for all, and to make sure that prevention plays a big part in health care. In the case of guns, prevention means we prevent homicides and devastating, expensive gun injuries by preventing those who shouldn't have guns from getting their hands on guns.

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.

What I can do is to go out and talk about the problems and solutions, make people aware of the scope of the problems, get them to become advocates for a turnaround, and convince them to develop an action plan, targeted to their community, to deal with young people. [They need to] find out what the kids want to do - dances, midnight-basketball leagues.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Who is the NRA anyway? They are usually middle-income people who only think of themselves, who want to have no government, really, except self-rule by themselves. I think that little cracks are starting to emerge in the NRA armor.

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

I think we should have a very, very heavy tax on handguns and on bullets.

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.

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

I support a total ban on handgun ownership for anyone under eighteen. Uzis should be absolutely banned from entering this country. Automatic weapons of any kind should not be for sale in America. For that matter, toy Uzis should not be available for kids, either. There would be a minimum seven-day waiting period between applying for a gun permit and obtaining a gun.

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."

You can't keep an ignorant population healthy.

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

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.

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

The best contraceptive in the world is a good education.

The evidence is overwhelming that marijuana 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, marijuana is less toxic than many of the drugs that physicians prescribe every day.

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

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

I feel that we can't educate children who are not healthy, and we can't keep them healthy if they're not educated. There has to be a marriage between health and education. You can't learn if your mind is full of unhealthy images from daily life and confusion about right and wrong.

We know that there are several predisposing factors to gun violence: poverty, lack of education, lack of good parenting, lack of jobs, living in an environment where violence is seen every day, all the time. And children being born to children are likely to have all of these predisposing factors.

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

Handguns are a public health issue.

Certainly we have to find some kind of warning to put on guns for sale. And that's not too far-fetched. But what I really want to do is take the guns out of the hands of irresponsible people.

Guns are far too accessible and too readily available. There are over 200 million guns in our society - and that's just the legal ones, the ones we know about. Every ten seconds, another gun is produced. And every fourteen minutes, some person in America dies from gun-inflicted action.

I don't know how anybody can say that who looks at what's happening to our young people and what's happening to our country, all because of guns. The NRA is putting themselves in a position where people will no longer trust them. They've been trusted in the past, but now their credibility is on the line.

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

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.

Nobody with a criminal record would ever be allowed to buy a gun. All assault weapons would be banned, completely. And everybody who still possesses a gun license would receive mandatory education and training by professionals on how to handle a gun. After all, I can't drive my car until I pass a test proving I know how to handle a car.