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

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.

Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned.

There’s a God force inside of you that gives you a will to live.

If it wasn’t for Abe Lincoln, I’d still be on the open market.

It’s cool to be healthy.

People with high blood pressure, diabetes – those are conditions brought about by lifestyle. If you change the lifestyle, those conditions will leave.

You know, I always say white is not a color, white is an attitude, and if you haven’t got trillions of dollars in the bank that you don’t need, you can’t be white.

I’m not a comic. I’m a humorist.

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.

How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?

What is the why behind everything you do?

On top of the world, or in the depths of despair.

You don’t want to get to the top of the ladder only to find out you had it leaning up against the wrong wall.

To be and to have meaning are the same.

One could only damage oneself through the harm one did to others. One could never get directly at oneself.

If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.

Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is abominable.