Dick Gregory Quotes

Love is man's natural endowment, but he doesn't know how to use it. He refuses to recognize the power of love because of his love of power.

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.

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.

The most difficult thing to get people to do is to accept the obvious.

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

Education means to bring out wisdom. Indoctrination means to push in knowledge.

I don't know why America always thinks she has to run all around the world forcing people to take our way of governance at the barrel of a gun. When you've got something really good, you don't have to force it on people. They will steal it!

Fear and God do not occupy the same space.

I never learned hate at home, or shame. I had to go to school for that.

Because I'm a civil rights activist, I am also an animal rights activist. Animals and humans suffer and die alike. Violence causes the same pain, the same spilling of blood, the same stench of death, the same arrogant, cruel and vicious taking of life. We shouldn't be a part of it.

When I tune into my beautiful self, I get happiness. Everything in the universe belongs to me.

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.

Poor is a state of mind you never grow out of, but being broke is just a temporary condition.

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.

Civil Rights: What black folks are given in the U.S. on the installment plan, as in civil-rights bills. Not to be confused with human rights, which are the dignity, stature, humanity, respect, and freedom belonging to all people by right of their birth.

The only good thing about the good old days is they're gone.

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

The United States is the most dishonest, ungodly, unspiritual nation that ever existed in the history of the planet.

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.

America will tolerate the taking of a human life without giving it a second thought. But don't misuse a household pet.

Laughter is the best way to release tensions and fears.

Just being a Negro doesn't qualify you to understand the race situation any more than being sick makes you an expert on medicine.

The only person on the planet saying derogatory things about his woman is the black man.

In the United States, the Constitution is a health chart left by the Founding Fathers which shows whether or not the body politic is in good health. If the national body is found to be in poor health, the Founding Fathers also left a prescription for the restoration of health called the Declaration of Independence.

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

Truth is the baby of the world. It never gets old.

We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn't think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre.

Whenever the dollar is held supreme and capitalistic interests dominate, a higher value will always be placed upon property rights than upon human rights.

Race baiters and discriminators may go underground, but they never move out of town.

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.

I go to Chinese Christian community. Jesus looks Chinese. I go to Japanese Christian community. Jesus looks Japanese. I go to Brazilian Christian community. Jesus looks Brazilian. How come in America Jesus looks white?

When you've got something really good, you don't have to force it on people. They will steal it!

If I had to write down the most important people in the history of this planet, No.1 would be (abolitionist) John Brown. Why? Because he's a white man who said he would die for the cause, because they could take him, but they weren't going to take his grandchildren. That brother was beautiful.

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.

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

The free man is the man with no fears.

...Humans were the only creatures in the world that ate their food cooked. You'd never find a Gorilla frying up some bananas for dinner or a lion charcoal-broiling a zebra steak. Cats don't often run to the oven with a mouse or bird they've captured, and a dog wouldn't naturally prepare its rabbit dinner in a stew.

Life isn't a race. It's a relay.

What price would God demand from the churches for having the audacity to lighten the color of his son's skin, and straighten out his nappy hair?

My wife and I went to jail in Selma. The difference when I was back there recently? White folks? No. Black folks who were not scared. I was behind the president this time. When I was a little boy and ran around with trifling dudes, I was the only one scared of dogs. And I was bitten 14 times! Dogs smell scared. And that's the same thing with people: 50 years ago they smelled fear. There was no fear this time.

I chose to be an agitator. And there's one interesting thing about being an agitator - and I tell people - the next time you put your underwear in the washing machine, take the agitator out, and all you're going to end up with is some dirty, wet drawers.

Why are black folks singing Amazing Grace which is a song about a white slaver's conversion?

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.

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.

[A politician is] a person skilled in the art of compromise. Usually an elected official who has compromised to get nominated, compromised to get elected, and compromised repeatedly to stay in office.

The world is fed by greed.

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

In most places in the country, voting is looked upon as a right and a duty, but in Chicago it's a sport.

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

There's a God force inside of you that gives you a will to live.