Dick Gregory

Comedian

1932-10-12

Quotes by Dick Gregory

• I went to Ethiopia, and it dawned on me that you can tell a starving, malnourished person because they've got a bloated belly and a bald head. And I realized that if you come through any American airport and see businessmen running through with bloated bellies and bald heads, that's malnutrition, too.

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• People with high blood pressure, diabetes - those are conditions brought about by life style. If you change the life style, those conditions will leave.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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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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• If you take 12 waters from the coconut - not the ones you buy in the store, although that's good - but the fresh coconuts, the little brown ones with the three eyes, if you take 12 of those within 24 hours, your blood will go back to the way it was when you were born.

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• 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.

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• In America, with all of its evils and faults, you can still reach through the forest and see the sun. But we don't know yet whether that sun is rising or setting for our country.

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

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• Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned.

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

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• Political promises are much like marriage vows. They are made at the beginning of the relationship between candidate and voter, but are quickly forgotten.

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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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• 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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• If a man calls me a nigger, he is calling me something I am not. The nigger exists only in his own mind; therefore his mind is the nigger. I must feel sorry for such a man.

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