Dick Gregory
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!Collection: Running
Education means to bring out wisdom. Indoctrination means to push in knowledge.Collection: Mean
Fear and God do not occupy the same space.Collection: Space
Poor is a state of mind you never grow out of, but being broke is just a temporary condition.Collection: Mind
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.Collection: Pain
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.Collection: Respect
The only good thing about the good old days is they're gone.Collection: Gone
Luck is opportunity meeting up with preparation. So you must prepare yourself to be lucky.Collection: Opportunity
The United States is the most dishonest, ungodly, unspiritual nation that ever existed in the history of the planet.Collection: United States
The free man is the man with no fears.Collection: Men
I chose to be an agitator. And there's one interesting thing about being an agitator - and I tell people - the next time you put your underwear in the washing machine, take the agitator out, and all you're going to end up with is some dirty, wet drawers.Collection: Dirty
Truth is the baby of the world. It never gets old.Collection: Baby
Laughter is the best way to release tensions and fears.Collection: Laughter
Just being a Negro doesn't qualify you to understand the race situation any more than being sick makes you an expert on medicine.Collection: Race
America is 5 percent of the world's population and consumes 96 percent of the world's hard drugs.Collection: America
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.Collection: Race
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.Collection: Thug
America has the mightiest military on the planet, and they didn't get there with entertainers.Collection: Military
Wouldn't it be a helluva joke if all this were really burnt cork and you people were being tolerant for nuthin'?Collection: People
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.Collection: Mother
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.Collection: Country
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.Collection: White
The NAACP is a wonderful organization . . . But do you realize if tomorrow morning we had complete integration, all them cats would be outta work?Collection: Morning
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!Collection: Zoos
I tell people, 'If you want to send a message to the White House, call my house.Collection: White
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.Collection: Block
Audiences feel no hatred from me. Because I'm not bitter.Collection: Hatred
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.Collection: Intelligence
I consider myself always a humorist. And I think anybody who tells jokes or makes people laugh is humor.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Baseball
When you look at Hitler and those thugs, you can put Walmart right next to them.Collection: Thug
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.Collection: White
At the very last moment, Nature would force you to blink your eye. Nature will protect her own.Collection: Eye
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.Collection: Children
Eating liver out of a cow's body is like eating the filter out of a car.Collection: Car
A Klaner KKK is a cat who gets out of bed in the middle of the night and takes his sheet with him.Collection: Cat
The jelly-bean eating thug says that national defense is important. But national defense starts at home.Collection: Peace
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.Collection: Car
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.Collection: Powerful
Because you make me laugh don't make you a comic. A comedian is a person who, that's how they make their living.Collection: Laughing
I won't say I'm out of condition now - but I even puff going downstairs.Collection: Health
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.Collection: Children
No being should be killed. No being should be unloved.Collection: Should
America is concerned more with the possibility of moon folks than the reality of hungry poor folks.Collection: Moon
The world is fed by greed.Collection: Greed
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."Collection: College
I wouldn't mind paying taxes... if I knew they were going to a friendly countryCollection: Country
[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.Collection: Art