Dick Gregory was at the forefront of political activism in the 1960s, when he protested the Vietnam War and racial injustice. He was arrested multiple times and went on many hunger strikes. He later became a speaker and author, primarily promoting spirituality. Gregory began his career as a comedian while serving in the military in the mid-1950s. He served in the Army for a year and a half at Fort Hood in Texas, Fort Lee in Virginia, and Fort Smith in Arkansas. These Dick Gregory quotes will motivate you.
Best 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.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “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.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “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.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “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.” ~ Dick Gregory
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“The most difficult thing to get people to do is to accept the obvious.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “One of the things I keep learning is that the secret of being happy is doing things for other people.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “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!” ~ Dick Gregory
- “Education means to bring out wisdom. Indoctrination means to push in knowledge.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “When I tune into my beautiful self, I get happiness.
Everything in the universe belongs to me.” ~ Dick Gregory -
“Fear and God do not occupy the same space.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “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.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “I never learned hate at home, or shame. I had to go to school for that.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “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
- “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.” ~ Dick Gregory
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“Poor is a state of mind you never grow out of, but being broke is just a temporary condition.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “The only good thing about the good old days is they’re gone.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “The United States is the most dishonest, ungodly, unspiritual nation that ever existed in the history of the planet.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “What happens to Black Folks today, happens to White Folks tomorrow.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “Life isn’t a race. It’s a relay.” ~ Dick Gregory
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“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
- “I waited at the counter of a white restaurant for eleven years. When they finally integrated, they didn’t have what I wanted.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “Race baiters and discriminators may go underground, but they never move out of town.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “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.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “When you’ve got something really good, you don’t have to force it on people. They will steal it!” ~ Dick Gregory
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“Love is very dangerous if you just have love and don’t have the ability to be lovable.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “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?” ~ Dick Gregory - “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.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “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.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “Laughter is the best way to release tensions and fears.” ~ Dick Gregory
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“The only person on the planet saying derogatory things about his woman is the black man.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “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.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “Truth is the baby of the world. It never gets old.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “America will tolerate the taking of a human life without giving it a second thought. But don’t misuse a household pet.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “People with high blood pressure, diabetes – those are conditions brought about by life style. If you change the life style, those conditions will leave.” ~ Dick Gregory
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“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
- “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.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “Whenever the dollar is held supreme and capitalistic interests dominate, a higher value will always be placed upon property rights than upon human rights.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “…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.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “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?” ~ Dick Gregory
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“Luck is opportunity meeting up with preparation. So you must prepare yourself to be lucky.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “Why are black folks singing Amazing Grace which is a song about a white slaver’s conversion?” ~ Dick Gregory
- “The free man is the man with no fears.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “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.” ~ Dick Gregory quotes
- “In the South they don’t mind how close I get, so long as I don’t get too big. In the North they don’t mind how big I get, so long as I don’t get too close.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “White folks are the luckiest people: Finally a black president and he’s a behaved one. Went to the best schools, best colleges, never raises his voice. I ran for president in 1968. I tell (audiences) if I won, I would have dug up the Rose Garden and planted
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“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
- “Black folks tell their kids they have to be twice as good as a white person? Well, if I tell a child of mine that, or that they have to be careful – that this is what a cop would do if you do this – they think something is wrong with them. I tell them death is better.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “America is concerned more with the possibility of moon folks than the reality of hungry poor folks.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “No being should be killed. No being should be unloved.” ~ Dick Gregory
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“When I lost my rifle, the Army charged me 85 dollars. That is why in the Navy the Captain goes down with the ship.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “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.” ~ 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
- “There’s a God force inside of you that gives you a will to live.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “The world is fed by greed.” ~ Dick Gregory
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“[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.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “There is a limit on how much information you can keep bottled up.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “Black Americans are the only people in history who are for education instead of liberation. George Washington wasn’t beating up on British for the right to open a college! The line isn’t “Give me education or give me death.”” ~ Dick Gregory
- “In most places in the country, voting is looked upon as a right and a duty, but in Chicago it’s a sport.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “The funniest jokes you know aren’t from comics but relatives, friends – from your life. That’s the funniest stuff.” ~ Dick Gregory
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“You got to die of something because if you die of nothing, they won’t pay your insurance.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “Black conservatives have a right to exist, but why would I want to walk around with a swastika on my shirt after the way Hitler done messed it up?” ~ Dick Gregory
- “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.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “I wouldn’t mind paying taxes… if I knew they were going to a friendly country” ~ Dick Gregory
- “. I was told to extend nonviolence to the mother and her calf.” ~ Dick Gregory
- “When you have a good mother and no father, God kind of sits in. It’s not enough, but it helps.” ~ Dick Gregory
