Comedian

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.

I never thought I'd see the day that I would see white folks as frightened, or more so, than black folks was during the civil rights movement when we was in Mississippi.

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.

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

When you have a good mother and no father, God kind of sits in. It's not enough, but it helps.

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 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.

When I lost my rifle, the Army charged me 85 dollars. That is why in the Navy the Captain goes down with the ship.

Every holiday on the calendar, I check in a hotel and fast - I don't eat, I don't drink, I don't talk.

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.

To me, seeing a really great comedian is a bit like watching a musician or a poet.

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

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

Being white is a job in America. You take that away, you better get the soldiers out.

My belief is, you know, certain things have to be explained that's never been explained.

I tell people, 'If you want to send a message to the White House, call my house.'

We thought I was going to be a great athlete, and we were wrong, and I thought I was going to be a great entertainer, and that wasn't it either. I'm going to be an American Citizen. First class.

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.

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

It was an unwritten law that black comics were not permitted to work white nightclubs. You could sing and you could dance, but you couldn't stand flat-footed and talk; that was a no-no.