Quotes from Dick Gregory

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

Just as the prisoner was being strapped into the electric chair, the priest said, "Son, is there anything I can do for you?" The prisoner said, "Yeah, when they pull the switch, hold my hand."

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

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

Let me tell you, never before in the history of this planet has anybody made the progress that African-Americans have made in a 30-year period, in spite of many black folks and white folks lying to one another.

Baseball is very big with my people. It figures. It's the only way we can get to shake a bat at a white man without starting a riot.

Last time I was down South, I walked into this restaurant. 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, no way! Bring me a whole fried chicken."

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.

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 hear entertainers all the time, saying, 'If I couldn't get paid for this, I'd do it for free.' When's the last time you ever heard a business person say, 'If I couldn't get paid for being chairman of British Petroleum, I'd do it for free'?

In America, with all its evils and faults, you can still reach through the forest and see the sun. But we do not know yet whether the sun is rising or setting for our country.

It's cool to be healthy.

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.

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

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.

You know, I always say white is not a colour, white is an attitude, and if you haven't got trillions of dollars in the bank that you don't need, you can't be white.

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.

Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned.

Nature is not affected by finance. If someone offered you ten thousand dollars to let them touch your eyeball without blinking, you would never collect the money. At the very last moment, Nature would force you to blink your eye. Nature will protect her own.

For years they told us where to sit, where to eat, and where to live. Now they want to dictate our bedroom habits. First the white man tells me to sit in the back of the bus. Now it looks like he wants me to sleep under the bed. Back in the days of slavery, black folks couldn't grow kids fast enough for white folks to harvest. Now that we've got a little taste of power, white folks want us to call a moratorium on having children.

I've had white people tell me: 'love it or leave it.' I'm not gonna leave America until she's straightened out, and I'm not gonna love her until she lovable again. Then I'm getting the fuck out of here.

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

The funniest jokes you know aren't from comics but relatives, friends - from your life. That's the funniest stuff.