Quotes By Dick Gregory

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

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

It's cool to be healthy.

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned.

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'?

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.

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