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.

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.

There's a God force inside of you that gives you a will to live.

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.

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 won't say I'm out of condition now - but I even puff going downstairs.

...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.