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.
Henry Louis Gates
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More Henry Louis Gates
People are afraid, and when people are afraid, when their pie is shrinking, they look for somebody t... HENRY LOUIS GATES Diversity doesn't mean black and white only. HENRY LOUIS GATES The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make... HENRY LOUIS GATES Brazil is the second blackest nation in the world. HENRY LOUIS GATES So when you do your family tree and Margaret Cho does hers, and... Wanda Sykes and John Legend... we... HENRY LOUIS GATES I give a speech to the black freshmen at Harvard each year, and I say, 'You can like Mozart and ... HENRY LOUIS GATES The sad truth is that the civil rights movement cannot be reborn until we identify the causes of bla... HENRY LOUIS GATES Cuba is like going to a whole other planet. It's so different but it's so similar to the Uni... HENRY LOUIS GATES In America there is institutional racism that we all inherit and participate in, like breathing the ... 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In order to get anywhere near high ... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Any man who, having a child or children he can't support, proceeds to have another should be sterili... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Economic independence is the foundation of the only sort of freedom worth a damn HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it ... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN It is Hell, of course, that makes priests powerful, not Heaven, for after thousands of years of so-c... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The only really happy folk are married women and single men. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN God is a Republican, and Santa Claus is a Democrat HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The great secret of happiness in love is to be glad that the other fellow married her HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-hor... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christian... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN A national political campaign is better than the best circus ever heard of, with a mass baptism and ... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN A fool who, after plain warning, persists in dosing himself with dangerous drugs should be free to d... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The way for newspapers to meet the competition of radio and television is simply to get out better p... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN There is only one justification for having sinned, and that is to be glad of it HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN At the moment of the contemporary metaphysician's loftiest flight, when he is most gratefully warmed... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for idea... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN To wage a war for a purely moral reason is as absurd as to ravish a woman for a purely moral reason HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound c... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Suicide is belated acquiescence in the opinion of one's wife's relatives HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The objection of the scandalmonger is not that she tells of racy doings, but that she pretends to be... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Lying is not only excusable; it is not only innocent; it is, above all, necessary and unavoidable. W... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexpl... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN He uses his sources as a drunkard uses lampposts; not to light him upon his way, but to dissimulate ... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN A man loses his sense of direction after four drinks; a woman loses hers after four kisses HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice t... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too. HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN One seldom discovers a true believer that is worth knowing HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN It is only the savage, whether of the African bush or of the American gospel tent, who pretends to k... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN Every man is thoroughly happy twice in his life: just after he has met his first love, and just afte... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN The fact that a human brain of high amperage, otherwise highly efficient, may have a hole in it is s... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN You come into the world with nothing, and the purpose of your life is to make something out of nothi... HENRY LOUIS MENCKEN