Dick Gregory Quotes

Most people can't understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do.

I made my first white women friends in college; they loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered.

I think Sweden is known for people being a bit more quiet than other cultures, and I guess it's a mixture: shyness and leaving room for other people to talk. Of course, when people get drunk, all of that disappears.

Prim and proper white women, I like what I see.

I had very few friends. We always ate dinner with our parents. We didn't want to go out. American adolescence was a lot wilder than I would have felt comfortable with.

I go out with white women. This makes a lot of people unhappy, mostly black women.

Different cultures have different predilections for different kinds of crime.

It's difficult to identify why two cultures will react differently to the same sport.

In the U.S., women smile more than men. In the U.K., there's no difference between men and women.

Many travelers get into trouble in places like Dubai by assuming that it is sufficiently Western for them to drink as they do back home. But elsewhere in the Muslim world, it is quite controlled, and the non-Muslim will be steered down a fairly narrow path.

The English love for privacy is proverbial, and has not been exaggerated. A stranger who strikes up a conversation is looked upon with suspicion - unless he happens to be an American, when his ignorance of good manners is indulged.

Why did Americans smile so often? Was it out of politeness or because of a gay disposition? Whatever it was, I for one had never been spoiled with smiles. I found it very pleasant! ... I was beginning to understand that with Americans smiling was, as with healthy infants, a natural need. And my reaction was to respond in the same way.

To be sure an European woman would blush to her fingers' ends at the very idea of appearing publicly stark naked; but education and prejudice are everything, since it is an axiom, that where there is no feeling of self-reproach, there can assuredly be no shame.

Generally in New York, people just walk over you with no problem about that. Other countries, people want to resuscitate you, like, after a bit.

Everything that's innocent to us is crazy to them.

I feel like showering more than once a day or every day is such a white people thing.

People on the Continent either tell you the truth or lie; in England they hardly ever lie, but they would not dream of telling you the truth.

The way one was brought up isn't an excuse for rude behavior.

Custom determines what is agreeable.

It's always weird to eat something that is a pet elsewhere.

In America many things that are interesting are seen as odd.

Americans are incredibly polite as long as they get what they want.

Good general-purpose manners nowadays may be said to consist in knowing how much you can get away with.

Men walk almost always in the paths trodden by others, proceeding in their actions by imitation.

When one is polite in German, one lies.