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

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.

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.

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.

When I was a child, if someone had talked to me about buying water, I would have thought it was a joke.

Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

A child can teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires

If all the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they would feel bound to concentrate their money on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals.

For a man’s counsel cannot have equal weight or worth, when he alone has no children to risk in the general danger.

The walls of the educational system must come down. Education should not be a privilege, so the children of those who have money can study.

I’ve worked with children all my life.

We are most nearly ourselves when we achieve the seriousness of the child at play.