Once I realized the value of making people laugh, I got very good at it. Fast.
DICK GREGORYWhen I was a boy, I was taught never to use insulting expressions like, ‘I’ve been gypped,’ or, ‘He welshed on the deal.’
More Dick Gregory Quotes
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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.
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Just being a Negro doesn’t qualify you to understand the race situation any more than being sick makes you an expert on medicine.
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America will tolerate the taking of a human life without giving it a second thought. But don’t misuse a household pet.
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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.
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Coconut milk is the only thing on this planet that comes identically to mother’s milk.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Revolution ain’t nothing but an extent of evolution; Evolution is a fact of nature.
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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.
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If all you can do is judge a person by their appearance because you don’t have the spirit to judge someone from within, you’re in trouble.
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I tell people, ‘If you want to send a message to the White House, call my house.’
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When you shoot right and truth and justice down, the more right and truth and justice will rise up.
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Even though he understood the depths of racism and black oppression, Ali lived his life as a free man—a free loving and lovable man.
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Poor is a state of mind you never grow out of, but being broke is just a temporary condition.
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I waited at the counter of a white restaurant for eleven years. When they finally integrated, they didn’t have what I wanted.
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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.
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When I lost my rifle, the Army charged me 85 dollars. That is why in the Navy the Captain goes down with the ship.
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Being white is a job in America. You take that away, you better get the soldiers out.
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You hear entertainers all the time, saying, ‘If I couldn’t get paid for this, I’d do it for free.’ When’s the last time you ever heard a business person say, ‘If I couldn’t get paid for being chairman of British Petroleum, I’d do it for free?’
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There is a limit on how much information you can keep bottled up.
DICK GREGORY -
I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighborhood after dark.
DICK GREGORY -
Home was a place to be only when all other places were closed.
DICK GREGORY -
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.
DICK GREGORY -
To me, seeing a really great comedian is a bit like watching a musician or a poet.
DICK GREGORY -
One of the things I keep learning is that the secret of being happy is doing things for other people.
DICK GREGORY