#ted

You 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 Passage, as I like to put it, and find the tribe or ethnic group that I was from in Africa. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#africa #alex #back #case #envy

You have a diasporic black world, and the only way to put it back together again is symbolic. It's like Humpty Dumpty. Whoever could edit the 'Encyclopedia Africana' would provide symbolic order to the fragments created over the past 500 years. That is a major contribution. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#back #black #contribution #could #created

Government funding that's coming from the United States is making a huge difference on the ground in the developing world. It's really palpable - it's making a huge difference saving lives. ↗

— Melinda Gates

#developing #developing world #difference #funding #government

Having children made us look differently at all these things that we take for granted, like taking your child to get a vaccine against measles or polio. ↗

— Melinda Gates

#child #children #differently #get #granted

If you are successful, it is because somewhere, sometime, someone gave you a life or an idea that started you in the right direction. Remember also that you are indebted to life until you help some less fortunate person, just as you were helped. ↗

— Melinda Gates

#because #direction #fortunate #gave #help

There are absolutely lots of teachers who are trying to come into the profession, but they are not attracted enough to say, 'I'm going to switch careers to do it,' or they are often not retained... because the salaries and the compensation aren't there to make it happen. ↗

— Melinda Gates

#attracted #because #careers #come #compensation

We started this mostly from an intellectual place. ↗

— Melinda Gates

#mostly #place #started

There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite. ↗

— Paul Gauguin

#appetite #cultivated #demand #every #fresh

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a clown. I didn't want to be an actor, I wanted to join the circus and entertain people. ↗

— Eric Stonestreet

#circus #clown #entertain #entertain people #i

A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve, which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless. ↗