America is 5 percent of the world's population and consumes 96 percent of the world's hard drugs.
People keep telling me about the white race and the black race - and it really doesn't make sense. I played Miami, met a fellow two shades darker than me - and his name was Ginsberg! Took my place in two sit-in demonstrations - nobody knew the difference. The he tried for a third lunch counter and blew the whole bit ... asked for blintzes.
So why would I want to call myself a conservative after the way them white racist thugs have used that word to hide behind? They call themselves new Republicans.
Once I realised the value of making people laugh, I got very good at it. Fast.
America has the mightiest military on the planet, and they didn't get there with entertainers.
Wouldn't it be a helluva joke if all this were really burnt cork and you people were being tolerant for nuthin'?
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'?
I feel that the same God-force that is the mother and father of the Pope is also the mother and father of the loneliest wino on the planet.
You know why Madison Avenue advertising has never done well in Harlem? We're the only ones who know what it means to be Brand X.
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.
I believe young voters will either vote for Obama or not vote at all. So the problem is not Obama the problem is the system. If you think about how mess up this country is most folk really don’t have choices.
When I went south in the 1960s, I knew I could die. If I went down there and did what I did up in Chicago and made all of those hatin' white folks laugh, then I would have been defeated.
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.
The NAACP is a wonderful organization . . . But do you realize if tomorrow morning we had complete integration, all them cats would be outta work?
The only thing I like about St. Louis is it has the best zoo in America, in Forest Park. Washington University is next door to the zoo. Animals get out, they're going to eat white people before they get to the ghetto!
I tell people, 'If you want to send a message to the White House, call my house.
I was born and raised in St. Louis, and this little town, eight blocks away, place no one ever heard of, a black man there commands the attention of the world for months? That ain't my world.
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.
I used to get letters saying, 'I didn't know black children and white children were the same.'
When I was a boy, I was taught never to use insulting expressions like, 'I've been gypped,' or, 'He welshed on the deal.'
Audiences feel no hatred from me. Because I'm not bitter.
A friend of mine who works for naval intelligence said an aerial satellite revealed that 1.9 million attended the event in 1995. But if they would have had a rumble at the march the newspapers would have said that 75 million Afro-Americans were there.
When I go through the airport and see white women walking through the airport barefooted, like athlete's feet don't exist, there's something wrong.
I consider myself always a humorist. And I think anybody who tells jokes or makes people laugh is humor.
I'm not a comic. I'm a humorist.
