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

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

Revolution ain’t nothing but an extent of evolution; Evolution is a fact of nature.

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.

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

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

Makes you wonder. When I left St. Louis, I was making five dollars a night. Now I’m getting $5,000 a week — for saying the same things out loud I used to say under my breath.

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.

The most difficult thing to get people to do is to accept the obvious.

They told me there was very little racial prejudice in Hawaii. Like a woman is just a little bit pregnant.

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

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.

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.

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

Every door of racial prejudice I can kick down, is one less door that my children have to kick down.

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

When you shoot right and truth and justice down, the more right and truth and justice will rise up.

To our girls, the name father is another name for what we created, love.

I will never rue the love inside of my heart because I have a king to uphold and queens to raise.

You blame your father but it was your mother who did not keep you safe -why you won’t trust women.

Children raised by mothers who do not keep their children sheltered from the wrath of their fathers, end up mistrusting women.

I come from a coal-mining, working-class background. My father was a coal miner.

I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.

Alexander the Great found the philosopher looking attentively at a pile of human bones. Diogenes explained,I am searching for the bones of your father but cannot distinguish them from those of a slave.

No one can have God as his father who does not have the Church as his mother.