Dick Gregory Quotes

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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?

The free man is the man with no fears.

...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.

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

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

[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.

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

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

Political promises are much like marriage vows.

They are made at the beginning of the relationship between candidate and voter, but are quickly forgotten.

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!

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.

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.

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

Martin Luther King taught us all nonviolence.

I was told to extend nonviolence to the mother and her calf.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

No being should be killed. No being should be unloved.

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

Baseball is very big with my people. It figures. It's the only way we can get to shake a bat at a white man without starting a riot.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Once we used to have to crank up our cars, now you can pop it on from inside your house. Everything has changed except how we get freedom.

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.

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