“I tell people, ‘If you want to send a message to the White House, call my house.’”

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

I never learned hate at home, or shame. I had to go to school for that.

One of the things I keep learning is that the secret of being happy is doing things for other people.

I personally believe breathatarianism to be the highest mode of human living breathing in pure air, absorbing the direct light and energies of the sun, bathing in pure water I look at the obituaries every morning and ain’t nobody listed but you eaters.

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

If democracy is such a good thing, let’s have more of it.

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.

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.

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

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.

When you’ve got something really good, you don’t have to force it on people. They will steal it!

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 were in Mississippi.

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

Last time I was down South I walked into this restaurant, and this white waitress came up to me and said: ‘We don’t serve colored people here.’ I said: ‘that’s all right, I don’t eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried chicken.

Just being a Negro doesn’t qualify you to understand the race situation any more than being sick makes you an expert on medicine.

Did you know that in New Orleans they still have brown bag parties? What’s that, you ask? You and I go to a party, and when we get to the door, there’s a brown bag hanging down from the ceiling, and if our skin is darker than the brown bag, we can’t go in.

Going to the mountains is going home.

A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

Barcelona is my home and I hope that I stay here for many years.

My only concern was to get home after a hard day’s work.

Love begins by taking care of the closest ones – the ones at home.

Meditation means to look deeply, to touch deeply, so we can realize we are already home.

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity

In the home begins the disruption of the peace of the world.