Top 15 Most Inspirational Henry Louis Gates Jr Quotes

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Henry Louis Gates Jr was born on September 16, 1950, in Keyser, is a renowned African-American scholar and university professor. He is a scholar, literary critic, and writer who has written many books and is known for developing African American studies.

In his book, “The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism,” Gates discusses the work of such writers as William Faulkner, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston. In these works, he argues that black texts are not just about black social issues. Still, they also inform the white American reader about the “unconscious” aspects of America’s history and culture.

He is also the director of the Hutchins Center for African American Research and the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of African American Studies, History, and Writing at Harvard University.

Here are his most inspirational quotes that will motivate you to reach your full potential and be all you can be.

15 Most Inspirational Henry Louis Gates Jr Quotes

1. “You have to have a canon so the next generation can come along and explode it.” – Henry Louis Gates

2. “The thing about black history is that the truth is so much more complex than anything you could make up.” ― Henry Louis Gates

3. “Everything my mother and father did was designed to put me where I am.” ― Henry Louis Gates

4. “There are just so many stories that are buried on family trees.” – Henry Louis Gates

5. “Conspiracy theories are an irresistible labor-saving device in the face of complexity.” ― Henry Louis Gates

6. “Diversity doesn’t mean black and white only.” – Henry Louis Gates

7. “If Martin Luther King came back, he’d say we need another civil rights movement built on class not race.” ― Henry Louis Gates

8. “I have no plans to slow down.” – Henry Louis Gates

9. “People 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.” ― Henry Louis Gates

10. “No human culture is inaccessible to someone who makes the effort to understand, to learn, to inhabit another world.” ― Henry Louis Gates

11. “The first step toward tolerance is respect and the first step toward respect is knowledge.” ― Henry Louis Gates

12. “Learning to sing one’s own songs, to trust the particular cadences of own’s voices, is also the goal of any writer.” ― Henry Louis Gates

13. “Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.” ― Henry Louis Gates

14. “Learning to sing one’s own songs, to trust the particular cadences of own’s voices, is also the goal of any writer.” – Henry Louis Gates

15. “I want to be a figure for prison reform. I think that the criminal justice system is rotten.” ― Henry Louis Gates

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