Dick Gregory quotes:

I am really enjoying the new Martin Luther King Jr stamp - just think about all those white bigots, licking the backside of a black man.

Political promises are much like marriage vows. They are made at the beginning of the relationship between candidate and voter, but are quickly forgotten.

I went to Ethiopia, and it dawned on me that you can tell a starving, malnourished person because they've got a bloated belly and a bald head. And I realized that if you come through any American airport and see businessmen running through with bloated bellies and bald heads, that's malnutrition, too.

We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn't think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre.

If they took all the drugs, nicotine, alcohol and caffeine off the market for six days, they'd have to bring out the tanks to control you.

When I lost my rifle, the Army charged me 85 dollars. That is why in the Navy the Captain goes down with the ship.

And we love to dance, especially that new one called the Civil War Twist. The Northern part of you stands still while the Southern part tries to secede.

America will tolerate the taking of a human life without giving it a second thought. But don't misuse a household pet.

I tell people, 'If you want to send a message to the White House, call my house.'

People with high blood pressure, diabetes - those are conditions brought about by life style. If you change the life style, those conditions will leave.

Because I'm a civil rights activist, I am also an animal rights activist. Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and vicious taking of life. We shouldn't be a part of it.

Martin Luther King taught us all nonviolence. I was told to extend nonviolence to the mother and her calf.

Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned.

If you take 12 waters from the coconut - not the ones you buy in the store, although that's good - but the fresh coconuts, the little brown ones with the three eyes, if you take 12 of those within 24 hours, your blood will go back to the way it was when you were born.

Just being a Negro doesn't qualify you to understand the race situation any more than being sick makes you an expert on medicine.

If it wasn't for Abe Lincoln, I'd still be on the open market.

There is a limit on how much information you can keep bottled up.

When I first broke through, there was only NBC, CBS and ABC, and they had news in the morning and in the evening - there wasn't no 24-hour news.

A friend of mine who works for naval intelligence said an aerial satellite revealed that 1.9 million attended the event in 1995. But if they would have had a rumble at the march the newspapers would have said that 75 million Afro-Americans were there.

I never thought I'd see the day that I would see white folks as frightened, or more so, than black folks was during the civil rights movement when we was in Mississippi.

My mother was the sweetest lady who ever lived on this planet, but if you tried to tell her that Jesus wasn't a Christian, she would stomp you to death.

There's a God force inside of you that gives you a will to live.

Love is very dangerous if you just have love and don't have the ability to be lovable.

In most places in the country, voting is looked upon as a right and a duty, but in Chicago it's a sport.

Once I realised the value of making people laugh, I got very good at it. Fast.

Why are black folks singing Amazing Grace which is a song about a white slaver's conversion?

I go to Chinese Christian community. Jesus looks Chinese. I go to Japanese Christian community. Jesus looks Japanese. I go to Brazilian Christian community. Jesus looks Brazilian. How come in America Jesus looks white?

Being white is a job in America. You take that away, you better get the soldiers out.

I never learned hate at home, or shame. I had to go to school for that.

Dogs are great assets to candidates, and the feeling seems to be engendered that if a dog loves the candidate, he can't be all that bad.

One of the things I keep learning is that the secret of being happy is doing things for other people.

You know, I always say white is not a colour, white is an attitude, and if you haven't got trillions of dollars in the bank that you don't need, you can't be white.

I waited at the counter of a white restaurant for eleven years. When they finally integrated, they didn't have what I wanted.

We thought I was going to be a great athlete, and we were wrong, and I thought I was going to be a great entertainer, and that wasn't it either. I'm going to be an American Citizen. First class.

In America, with all of its evils and faults, you can still reach through the forest and see the sun. But we don't know yet whether that sun is rising or setting for our country.

Last time I was down South I walked into this restaurant, and this white waitress came up to me and said: 'We don't serve colored people here.' "I said: 'that's all right, I don't eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried chicken.

I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighborhood after dark.

People keep telling me about the white race and the black race - and it really doesn't make sense. I played Miami, met a fellow two shades darker than me - and his name was Ginsberg! Took my place in two sit-in demonstrations - nobody knew the difference. The he tried for a third lunch counter and blew the whole bit ... asked for blintzes.

When you have a good mother and no father, God kind of sits in. It's not enough, but it helps.

You know why Madison Avenue advertising has never done well in Harlem? We're the only ones who know what it means to be Brand X.

When you look at Hitler and those thugs, you can put Walmart right next to them.

Education means to bring out wisdom. Indoctrination means to push in knowledge.

No kid in the world, no woman in the world should ever raise a hand against a no-good daddy. That's already been taken care of: A Man Who Destroys His Own Home Shall Inherit the Wind.

The jelly-bean eating thug says that national defense is important. But national defense starts at home.

A Klaner (KKK) is a cat who gets out of bed in the middle of the night and takes his sheet with him.

The NAACP is a wonderful organization . . . But do you realize if tomorrow morning we had complete integration, all them cats would be outta work?

What price would God demand from the churches for having the audacity to lighten the color of his son's skin, and straighten out his nappy hair?

I wouldn't mind paying taxes... if I knew they were going to a friendly country

Riches do not delight us so much with their possession, as torment us with their loss.

I feel that the same God-force that is the mother and father of the Pope is also the mother and father of the loneliest wino on the planet.

Because you make me laugh don't make you a comic. A comedian is a person who, that's how they make their living.

You hear entertainers all the time, saying, 'If I couldn't get paid for this, I'd do it for free.' When's the last time you ever heard a business person say, 'If I couldn't get paid for being chairman of British Petroleum, I'd do it for free'?

Now here's what I'm saying: I've always believed that every other month we hear about compromisation of bank records, I think that's the CIA and the FBI. Now let me tell you why I'm saying this. I don't believe no insignificant pip-squeak is going to be able to pull this off month after month and we can't find out what's going on.

Coconut milk is the only thing on this planet that comes identically to mother's milk.

I'm not a comic. I'm a humorist.

It was an unwritten law that black comics were not permitted to work white nightclubs. You could sing and you could dance, but you couldn't stand flat-footed and talk; that was a no-no.

It's cool to be healthy.

Every holiday on the calendar, I check in a hotel and fast - I don't eat, I don't drink, I don't talk.

If all you can do is judge a person by their appearance, because you don't have the spirit to judge someone from within, you're in trouble.

If I had to write down the most important people in the history of this planet, No.1 would be (abolitionist) John Brown. Why? Because he's a white man who said he would die for the cause, because they could take him, but they weren't going to take his grandchildren. That brother was beautiful.

The most difficult thing to get people to do is to accept the obvious.

Fear and God do not occupy the same space.

Love is man's natural endowment, but he doesn't know how to use it. He refuses to recognize the power of love because of his love of power.

Poor is a state of mind you never grow out of, but being broke is just a temporary condition.

The United States is the most dishonest, ungodly, unspiritual nation that ever existed in the history of the planet.

The only good thing about the good old days is they're gone.

I don't know why America always thinks she has to run all around the world forcing people to take our way of governance at the barrel of a gun. When you've got something really good, you don't have to force it on people. They will steal it!

Black folks tell their kids they have to be twice as good as a white person? Well, if I tell a child of mine that, or that they have to be careful - that this is what a cop would do if you do this - they think something is wrong with them. I tell them death is better.

When I went south in the 1960s, I knew I could die. If I went down there and did what I did up in Chicago and made all of those hatin' white folks laugh, then I would have been defeated.

My wife and I went to jail in Selma. The difference when I was back there recently? White folks? No. Black folks who were not scared. I was behind the president this time. When I was a little boy and ran around with trifling dudes, I was the only one scared of dogs. And I was bitten 14 times! Dogs smell scared. And that's the same thing with people: 50 years ago they smelled fear. There was no fear this time.

When I tune into my beautiful self, I get happiness. Everything in the universe belongs to me.

Civil Rights: What black folks are given in the U.S. on the installment plan, as in civil-rights bills. Not to be confused with human rights, which are the dignity, stature, humanity, respect, and freedom belonging to all people by right of their birth.

The only person on the planet saying derogatory things about his woman is the black man.

When you've got something really good, you don't have to force it on people. They will steal it!

The free man is the man with no fears.

In the United States, the Constitution is a health chart left by the Founding Fathers which shows whether or not the body politic is in good health. If the national body is found to be in poor health, the Founding Fathers also left a prescription for the restoration of health called the Declaration of Independence.

Truth is the baby of the world. It never gets old.

Life isn't a race. It's a relay.

[A politician is] a person skilled in the art of compromise. Usually an elected official who has compromised to get nominated, compromised to get elected, and compromised repeatedly to stay in office.

Nature is not affected by finance. If someone offered you ten thousand dollars to let them touch your eyeball without blinking, you would never collect the money. At the very last moment, Nature would force you to blink your eye. Nature will protect her own.

...Humans were the only creatures in the world that ate their food cooked. You'd never find a Gorilla frying up some bananas for dinner or a lion charcoal-broiling a zebra steak. Cats don't often run to the oven with a mouse or bird they've captured, and a dog wouldn't naturally prepare its rabbit dinner in a stew.

Race baiters and discriminators may go underground, but they never move out of town.

When I was a boy, I was taught never to use insulting expressions like, 'I've been gypped,' or, 'He welshed on the deal.'

To me, seeing a really great comedian is a bit like watching a musician or a poet.

Everything we do we should look at in terms of millions of people who can't afford it.

If you can justify killing to eat meat, you can justify the conditions of the ghetto. I cannot justify either one.

...Pets are found to suffer from all the ailments known to the human...

Revolution ain't nothing but an extent of evolution; Evolution is a fact of nature. So when old folks tell me that they don't understand hip hop and the music is too loud, well I guess it means you're not supposed to be in there.

My belief is, you know, certain things have to be explained that's never been explained.

Laughter is the best way to release tensions and fears.

So why would I want to call myself a conservative after the way them white racist thugs have used that word to hide behind? They call themselves new Republicans.

I didn't realize, when I decided to be a comic, that a black person had never been allowed to stand flat-footed in America and talk to white folks. It never happened before.

Some kind of way, we have to say enough is enough.

In the South they don't mind how close I get, so long as I don't get too big. In the North they don't mind how big I get, so long as I don't get too close.

If democracy is such a good thing, let's have more of it.

Don't have a high school diploma? You're in my Cabinet. Why? For 200 years, a lot of Cabinets have existed in our government. Powerful men. Well-educated. So let's try something totally new.

You got to die of something because if you die of nothing, they won't pay your insurance.

I used to get letters saying, 'I didn't know black children and white children were the same.'

America is concerned more with the possibility of moon folks than the reality of hungry poor folks.

Whenever the dollar is held supreme and capitalistic interests dominate, a higher value will always be placed upon property rights than upon human rights.

I buy about $1,500 worth of papers every month. Not that I trust them. I'm looking for the crack in the fabric.

Wouldn't it be a helluva joke if all this were really burnt cork and you people were being tolerant for nuthin'?

America is 5 percent of the world's population and consumes 96 percent of the world's hard drugs.

When I go through the airport and see white women walking through the airport barefooted, like athlete's feet don't exist, there's something wrong.

Black conservatives have a right to exist, but why would I want to walk around with a swastika on my shirt after the way Hitler done messed it up?

I believe young voters will either vote for Obama or not vote at all. So the problem is not Obama the problem is the system. If you think about how mess up this country is, most folk really don't have choices.

White folks are the luckiest people: Finally a black president and he's a behaved one. Went to the best schools, best colleges, never raises his voice. I ran for president in 1968. I tell (audiences) if I won, I would have dug up the Rose Garden and planted watermelon!

Audiences feel no hatred from me. Because I'm not bitter.

I was born and raised in St. Louis, and this little town, eight blocks away, place no one ever heard of, a black man there commands the attention of the world for months? That ain't my world.

The world is fed by greed.

The funniest jokes you know aren't from comics but relatives, friends - from your life. That's the funniest stuff.

America has the mightiest military on the planet, and they didn't get there with entertainers.

Black Americans are the only people in history who are for education instead of liberation. George Washington wasn't beating up on British for the right to open a college! The line isn't "Give me education or give me death."

I would never teach a child of mine to be kind to a cop who would shoot you in the back of the head. I would never have that conversation because children don't hear what you mean, they hear what you say.

I am one of the funniest people on the planet.

I would have painted the White House black. I would have!

The only thing I like about St. Louis is it has the best zoo in America, in Forest Park. Washington University is next door to the zoo. Animals get out, they're going to eat white people before they get to the ghetto!

Let me tell you, never before in the history of this planet has anybody made the progress that African-Americans have made in a 30-year period, in spite of many black folks and white folks lying to one another.

Eating liver out of a cow's body is like eating the filter out of a car.

I tell people, 'If you want to send a message to the White House, call my house.