Dick Gregory

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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'?

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

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

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.

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.

Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.