Dick Gregory Quotes

The world is a perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be.

Racist people, interestingly, are never as polite as smokers. Have you noticed that? Smokers always go, "Do you mind if I smoke? Oh, you do? Okay, I'll go outside and have a cigarette."

As a comedian, I think we all look for those areas where the truth diverts from what people are saying. That's why politics is such a rich area for us, because politicians make promises, and they don't keep them, and when we point out the difference, we get the laugh.

I try to attack all races and creeds, except the Irish. Clearly they are closest to the angels and don't deserve abuse. But the others have it coming.

The purpose of satire has been rightly stated as to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half truth, and our job, as I see it, is to put it back again!

Hypocrisy is great fodder for comedy.

You know, I've got a confession to make myself. I'm not really a priest, I've just got my shirt on backwards.

The right honorable gentlemen is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts.

I would spend a lot of time setting up an accident scene where it appeared that I had seriously hurt myself - hedge-cutter, ketchup, that sort of thing. When my sister happened upon the scene of horror, I would lift my head and pathetically plead for her to 'get Mum'.

Why it's been left to me to smooth things over, I don't know. Dennis Rodman, of all people. Keeping us safe is really not my job; it's the black guy's [Obama's] job. But I'll tell you this: If I don't finish in the top three for the next Nobel Peace Prize, something's seriously wrong.

Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment.

People are not what they seem to be according to their looks.

Black people playing tennis, next white people will be tap dancing!

Ironic people always dissolve when confronted with earnestness, it's their kryptonite

I observe a lot of you drunk people. What I do is I just let myself go there and fully commit to that drunk thing, not that I've ever done that myself. I've had a lot of practice. Let's be honest.

You can't fool me. There ain't no Sanity Clause!

irony is a way of having one's cake while appearing to eat it.

whoopdie-friggin-doo, fooled you!

I've noticed that when people are joking they're usually dead serious, and when they're serious, they're usually pretty funny.

It is a challenge. When you do things that are comedy, you're having to look at the funnier side of life. Often I find Christians - but not just Christians, (any) people who have a certain core belief of things - don't like to have fun made of them at all.

What a moron I was to think you were sweet and innocent, when it turns out you were actually college-educated the whole time!

Perhaps,” murmured his lordship, “I yielded to a compassionate impulse.” “A what?” gasped his best friend. “Oh, did you think I never did so?” said his lordship, the satirical glint in his eyes extremely pronounced. “You wrong me! I do, sometimes—not frequently, of course, but every now and then!

The fools standpoint is that all social institutions are games. He sees the whole world as game playing. That's why, when people take their games seriously and take on stern and pious expressions, the fool gets the giggles because he knows that it is all a game.

I like to feel prejudice towards people who are prejudice

As is so often the case with pieces that appear in the 'Onion,' I honestly could not decide whether this was a clever hoax or not - the arguments were almost exactly as stupid as the real thing.