“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.”

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.

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.

Home was a place to be only when all other places were closed.

There is a limit on how much information you can keep bottled up.

I believe young voters will either vote for Obama or not vote at all. So the problem is not Obama the problem is the system. If you think about how mess up this country is, most folk really don’t have choices.

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

If you could see the earth illuminated when you were in a place as dark as night, it would look to you more splendid than the moon.

Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.

No matter what, you must let your inner light guide you out of the darkness.

The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.

To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.

Raindrops blossom brilliantly in the rainbow, and change to flowers in the sod, but snow comes in full flower direct from the dark, frozen sky.

Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.

I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.