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

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.

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.

People with high blood pressure, diabetes - those are conditions brought about by life style. If you change the life style, those conditions will leave.

Just being a Negro doesn't qualify you to understand the race situation any more than being sick makes you an expert on medicine.

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.

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.