Dick Gregory

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“It's cool to be healthy.”

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

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

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

“I'm not a comic. I'm a humorist.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”