DICK GREGORY

Every holiday on the calendar, I check in a hotel and fast - I don't eat, I don't drink, I don't talk.

I waited at the counter of a white restaurant for eleven years. When they finally integrated, they didn't have what I wanted.

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.

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

Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned.

I used to get letters saying, 'I didn't know black children and white children were the same.'

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.

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.

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.

Love is very dangerous if you just have love and don't have the ability to be lovable.

My belief is, you know, certain things have to be explained that's never been explained.

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

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.

Everything we do we should look at in terms of millions of people who can't afford it.

Once I realised the value of making people laugh, I got very good at it. Fast.

I'm not a comic. I'm a humorist.

I am really enjoying the new Martin Luther King Jr stamp - just think about all those white bigots, licking the backside of a black man.

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 was in Mississippi.

When you have a good mother and no father, God kind of sits in. It's not enough, but it helps.

I buy about $1,500 worth of papers every month. Not that I trust them. I'm looking for the crack in the fabric.

When I was a boy, I was taught never to use insulting expressions like, 'I've been gypped,' or, 'He welshed on the deal.'

Riches do not delight us so much with their possession, as torment us with their loss.

I wouldn't mind paying taxes - if I knew they were going to a friendly country.

Being white is a job in America. You take that away, you better get the soldiers out.

And we love to dance, especially that new one called the Civil War Twist. The Northern part of you stands still while the Southern part tries to secede.