Dick Gregory > Quotes

“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.”
― Dick Gregory

“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.”
― Dick Gregory

“I never learned hate at home or shame. I had to go to school for that.”
― Dick Gregory

“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.”
― Dick Gregory

“The only good thing about the good old days is they're gone.”
― Dick Gregory

“Dear Momma―Wherever you are, if ever you hear the word "nigger" again, remember they are advertising my book.”
― Dick Gregory, Nigger

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

“I was learning that just being a Negro doesn't qualify you to understand the race situation any more than being sick makes you an expert on medicine.”
― Dick Gregory

“Momma, a welfare cheater. A criminal who couldn't stand to se her kids go hungry, or grow up in slumbs and end up mugging people in dar corners. I guess the system didn't want her to get off relief, the way it kept sending social workers around to be sure Momma wasn't trying to make things better.”
― Dick Gregory

“I personally believe breathatarianism to be the highest mode of human living [...] breathing in pure air, absorbing the direct light and energies of the sun, bathing in pure water [...] I look at the obituaries every morning and ain't nobody listed but you eaters.”
― Dick Gregory

“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. Bring me a whole fried chicken.' About that time, these three cousins came in. You know the ones I mean, Ku, Klux and Klan. They said, 'Boy, we're givin' you fair warnin. Anything you do to that chicken, we're gonna do to you.'

"So I put down my knife and fork, picked up that chicken, and kissed it.”
― Dick Gregory, Nigger

“Makes you wonder. When I left St. Louis, I was making five dollars a night. Now I'm getting $5,000 a week — for saying the same things out loud I used to say under my breath.”
― Dick Gregory, From the Back of the Bus

“I am so sick and tired of seeing a black person shot in the back, shot dead, followed by people saying, “Not all cops are bad.” You know how many lawyers get disbarred every year? But you never hear, “Not all lawyers are bad.” You know how many doctors lose their medical licenses? But you never hear anybody talking about, “Not all doctors are bad.” Police departments are filthy. If I pay a lawyer, I don’t expect him to sue me. If I go to a doctor, he’s not supposed to give me a disease. But we pay taxes so cops will protect us, and they shoot us instead—and the response is, “Not all cops are bad”? And still we think we’re part of America.”
― Dick Gregory, Defining Moments in Black History: Reading Between the Lies

“When you have a good mother and no father, God kind of sits in. It’s not good enough, but it helps. But I got tired of hearing Momma say, God, fix it so I can pay the rent; God, fix it so the lights will be turned on; God, fix it so the pot is full. I kind of felt it really wasn’t His job.”
― Dick Gregory, Nigger: An Autobiography

“Every door of racial prejudice I can kick down, is one less door that my children have to kick down.”
― Dick Gregory, Nigger

“We have problems all over the world today, because men cease to be individuals. We like to identify with everything other than ourselves. We like to identify with groups, races, religions, you hear it every day. 'I'm Italian! I'm German! I'm Negro! I'm Jewish!' So what? Do you realize that when you identify with anything other than yourself, first as an individual, you have a cheap way out a lot of your own shortcomings?”
― Dick Gregory

“Can you imagine what this old Negro had to go through? Can you imagine the day a Negro woman went to a black man and said: “Honey, I’m pregnant,” and both of them fell on their knees and prayed that their baby would be born deformed? Can you imagine what this Negro went through, hoping his baby is born crippled?
Because if he was born crippled, he would have less chance of being a slave and more chance of having freedom.”
― Dick Gregory, Nigger

“They told me there was very little racial prejudice in Hawaii. Like a woman is just a little bit pregnant.”
― Dick Gregory, Nigger

“What I’ve come to learn in my long life is that ignorance is not bliss; it is time consuming and costly as hell.”
― Dick Gregory, Defining Moments in Black History: Reading Between the Lies

“Even though he understood the depths of racism and black oppression, Ali lived his life as a free man—a free loving and lovable man.”
― Dick Gregory, Defining Moments in Black History: Reading Between the Lies

“When you shoot right and truth and justice down, the more right and truth and justice will rise up.”
― Dick Gregory, Nigger

“But what’s worse than that is the slaves who identified with their masters, as if the slaves’ value as human beings depended on what the masters were like. What they were like was evil! They were called “masters” because they owned human beings! And we slaves were ready to fight each other over which of the lowdown filthy dogs who owned us was the best! But it wasn’t the slaves’ fault. Like Douglass wrote, slaves are like other people. When you think about it, it’s a wonder more black folks didn’t fight with one another instead of fighting against the white man the way Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, David Walker, and a whole lot of others did. While you’re busy shaking your head thinking they were stupid, ask yourself this: are we any better today? Black people put on the uniform of the U.S. military, our masters, and go to Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and anywhere else Uncle Sam tells us to go, and fight and kill yellow-skinned folks and brown-skinned folks on behalf of the United States, our masters—just like slaves fighting other slaves. Meanwhile, back home, one out of every half-dozen blacks is locked up for committing the same drug crimes as white dudes who walk around free. What’s wrong with that picture? Then you’ve got blacks in police uniforms out there arresting other innocent blacks. Blacks in America really need to study the Jews in Germany. Those Jews never thought they were part of Hitler’s system, most of them never sided with the people oppressing them. We do. We go to war. What kind of abomination is that? How many blacks go to war because we can’t find a job, and are willing to kill or be killed just so we can feed ourselves and our families? But remember, our already-free Maroon ancestors risked all of that just to free others. Getting back to Frederick Douglass, it’s like he said: Slaves are like other people. Too many of us have that slave mentality. It can take a lot to get past that, but a lot of us have, and Frederick Douglass was one.”
― Dick Gregory, Defining Moments in Black History: Reading Between the Lies

“It was on Thanksgiving Day a number of years ago… I got to thinking that there might be some beings on another planet somewhere who are as intelligent compared with us as we are compared with turkeys.
Then I had visions of these beings from another planet going to the butcher shop with their meat list. I wonder what they'd call their butcher shops? They'd probably call them "folks shops." I could hear them placing an order: "Give me a half dozen Oriental knees, two Caucasian feet and twelve fresh Black lips." And the folks-shopkeeper comes back smiling and says, "These Black lips are so fresh they're still talkin'.”
― Dick Gregory, Dick Gregory's Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: Cookin' With Mother Nature

“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”
― Dick Gregory

“Home was a place to be only when all other places were closed.”
― Dick Gregory, Nigger: An Autobiography

“I guess that makes me as white as you now, boy. I got your spit inside me.”
― Dick Gregory, Nigger

“I told them, if you carry fifty pounds on your back and don’t weaken, you strengthen your back to carry a hundred, and then a thousand, and if that doesn’t break you, some day you’ll be able to carry the world. And walk with it. That’s how strong I feel.”
― Dick Gregory, Nigger: An Autobiography

“remember I said that ignorance is not bliss, and can be very costly. Did you know that 98 percent of the children who drown in the summertime are black? Why? Because historically we weren’t allowed in swimming pools because of Jim Crow. That law put a bad taste in black folks’ mouths, and to this day I don’t know how to swim. On my family’s farm, there was a lake a thousand feet deep. I told my wife, if one of our kids starts to drown, you go get him. I’m not going in the water. I can’t swim. I’m not going to play like I’m swimming. And when I was home, and the kids were out in the water playing, I would leave the house. I didn’t even want to hear them call my name when they were near the water.”
― Dick Gregory, Defining Moments in Black History: Reading Between the Lies

“And then the foreman told another boss to put me down in the furnace pit. "Nigger can take the heat better," he said. Well, the system wasn't going to beat me. I stood up next to that furnace, and I ate their goddamned salt tablets and just refused to pass out. They weren't going to make me quit, and I wasn't going to give them cause to fire me. I'd lean into that blazing pit until my face would sting, and when the lunch whistle blew I'd fall on the floor and vomit blood for half an hour and I'd clean it up myself.”
― Dick Gregory, Nigger

“Did you know that in New Orleans they still have brown bag parties? What’s that, you ask? You and I go to a party, and when we get to the door, there’s a brown bag hanging down from the ceiling, and if our skin is darker than the brown bag, we can’t go in.”
― Dick Gregory, Defining Moments in Black History: Reading Between the Lies