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.

The funniest jokes you know aren't from comics but relatives, friends - from your life. That's the funniest stuff.

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.

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.

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

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

You know, I always say white is not a colour, white is an attitude, and if you haven't got trillions of dollars in the bank that you don't need, you can't be white.