Don't have a high school diploma? You're in my Cabinet. Why? For 200 years, a lot of Cabinets have existed in our government. Powerful men. Well-educated. So let's try something totally new.

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 watermelon!

The NAACP is a wonderful organization . . . But do you realize if tomorrow morning we had complete integration, all them cats would be outta work?

Poor is a state of mind you never grow out of, but being broke is just a temporary condition.

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.

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.

Truth is the baby of the world. It never gets old.