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

Joycelyn Elders Medicine See all quotes by Joycelyn Elders →

React to this quote

More by Joycelyn Elders

“We've tried ignorance for a thousand years. It's time we try education.”

“We know that more than 70 to 80% of women masturbate, and 90% of men masturbate, and the rest lie.”

“As long as I was in Washington I never met anybody that I thought was good enough, who knew enough, or who loved enough to make sexual decisions for anybody else.”

“We must stop this love affair with the fetus.”

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

“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.”

Resonant Thoughts

"A pencil is a simple and predictable piece of technology. There's only one way of it working , and an obvious failure model. With a car, especially the kind of limp-along rust bucket most of us got fo…"

— Michael Marshall Smith

Literature1965

#knowledge

"Righteous Abel," says Matthew . What luck! So there is a righteous race! No such thing: Abel dies leaving no children, a fact full of meaning. He is unable to transmit his righteousness."

— Jacques Ellul

Literature1912–1994

#family

"I do very well three things: my job, stupidities and children. 1"

— Alain Delon

Music1935–2024

#family

"You know, people criticize me for talking about her because I had an affair with her husband, and I don’t blame them for that, I understand that. I understand that they can be mad at me. I get it. I a…"

— Gennifer Flowers

Politics1950

#knowledge