“I learned hard lessons in life; I had to because I had so much happen: My mother died my sophomore year in high school. The next year, same day, my brother dropped dead. Two years after that, I got married because my girlfriend got pregnant. The year after my wedding, my father – who I had only recently met – died.”

The success of my comedy has been not being afraid to touch on subject matters or issues that everyone else is politically scared of.

I don’t need to pat myself on the back until my arm breaks. I don’t need any of that.

Sometimes when you lose you win, son. Failure is just life’s way of preparing you for success.

I have so much respect for what’s funny.

Whatever you hear at the barber shop, stays at the barber shop.

Black audiences are hard. They always think they’re better than you. So you got to come with a little extra to satisfy them.

My daughter was a beautiful child.

My grandmother always told me how you start is how you finish.

My comedy comes from pain. I can’t stand to see someone hurting.

I always wanted to scuba dive. I used to scuba dive undercover like black Aquaman.

I took my sports experience to my life on stage. That’s why I’m so disciplined. Playing sports, I was always underestimated. I was never picked first to do anything. This always helped me. It taught me how to push myself.

Okay, first rule of this carpool. No breaking wind in my car. The only gas that Bernie Mac want to be smelling is unleaded.

As I got older, I got into all kinds of things in the streets – but for some reason, I never got caught up with the gangs growing up. Everybody dug me, man. I never had problems.

I came from a place where there wasn’t a lot of joy.

I want to have fun. Life ain’t no dress rehearsal. I want to have fun. I’m a comedian; I ain’t no politician. So everything I do is with humor, with love.

I’ve introduced myself with comedy, and once you’ve introduced yourself as something, that’s where people keep you. That’s where people like to hold you.

I admit, I don’t look like the athlete of the day’s supposed to look. My belly’s just a little big, my heinie’s just a little big, but, brother, I am bad, and they know I’m bad.

Have Love. Not love alone for one, but man as man they brother call; and scatter like the circling sun thy charities on all.

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy’s playing blues like we play, he’s in high school. When he starts playing jazz it’s like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.

My brother Shane and I used to spar with each other in the kitchen. We didn’t have gloves, so we wrapped tea towels around our hands.

No people are true Christians who do not think constantly of how they can lift their brother and sister, how they can assist their friends, how they can enlighten mankind, how they can make virtue the rule of conduct in the circle in which they live.

I was a tomboy and I didn’t have a bunch of brothers but I always wanted them and so I sort of adopted a few of my great friends to be my brother.

I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.

I am convinced that the women of the world, united without any regard for national or racial dimensions, can become a most powerful force for international peace and brotherhood.