Top 90 Bernie Mac Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You can’t change what happened. Just like you can’t change the future by worrying about it. You just have to keep moving.”

— Bernie Mac

2. “Whatever you hear at the barber shop, stays at the barber shop.”

— Bernie Mac

3. “Suffering is a good teacher. It keeps you in its grip until you’ve learned your lesson.”

— Bernie Mac

4. “Sometimes when you lose you win, son. Failure is just life’s way of preparing you for success.”

— Bernie Mac

5. “They say if you don’t have your health you ain’t got nothing, but the truth is you ain’t got nothing if you don’t have no one to worry about your health.”

— Bernie Mac

6. “If you mess something up, remember who got you there. Don’t be pointing fingers, even if finger-pointing is called for. Only one you got to blame is your own self.”

— Bernie Mac

7. “I can act. I’ve been acting for a long time, but like anything else, don’t nobody owe you nothing. You’ve go to pay your dues. You go from A to Z; you don’t go from M to Z.”

— Bernie Mac

8. “My comedy comes from pain. I can’t stand to see someone hurting.”

— Bernie Mac

9. “It took me a long time to get to where I’m at, in my career and as a man. I was going through my trials and tribulations in life, and it gave me the strength to tackle things that have come my way.”

— Bernie Mac

10. “I can’t build myself by beating somebody down.”

— Bernie Mac

11. “You have to meet all of the challenges, big and small. Because how you start is how you finish.”

— Bernie Mac

12. “Shut up before I drop yo ass off at Koreatown. Now hold on, America, don’t start writing no letters. I’m just kidding. But am I lying?”

— Bernie Mac

13. “I’ve always been a reserved cat. When I play sports, there’s people used to get mad at me because I didn’t hang out and things like that. I’ve never been that kind of person. Nothing has changed in that regard. I’ve never been posse, and all that. I’m a quiet storm.”

— Bernie Mac

14. “I’m funny. I’m a comedian. I’m not a clown.”

— Bernie Mac

15. “I want to speak directly to the audience, to say, ‘I’m like you – I’m frustrated, I’m not an expert, I don’t have a manual on parenting, I make mistakes, I’m selfish too.’”

— Bernie Mac

16. “When I get a chance to play golf or go on a boat with good people, take the boat out and put some lobsters on the grill, get the ice-cold beer and the cigars – that’s heaven here on earth.”

— Bernie Mac

17. “Okay, first rule of this carpool. No breaking wind in my car. The only gas that Bernie Mac want to be smelling is unleaded.”

— Bernie Mac

18. “That’s the whole key to anything: Don’t be afraid to fail. And is not afraid to fail.”

— Bernie Mac

19. “I’m not a star, I hate that word, and I’m an entertainer. Stars fall, you know, I’m an entertainer. I want to be known as an entertainer.”

— Bernie Mac

20. “I don’t have no story. Everybody wants this Hollywood story, but the world don’t owe you nothing, man. It’s what you owe the world.”

— Bernie Mac

21. “I want to do something that people can really say, ‘Hey, man, that was good, I’m proud of you, I’m proud of that.’ ‘Pride’ and ‘Transformers’ and things like that.”

— Bernie Mac

22. “Bernie Mac don’t sugarcoat.”

— Bernie Mac

23. “When you see people in terms of race or religion, that’s when the trouble starts. I don’t understand why people work so hard at pointing out our differences; we should be celebrating the things we have in common.”

— Bernie Mac

24. “Whatever success I’ve had, I always like to top it.”

— Bernie Mac

25. “Fear is not one of my attributes.”

— Bernie Mac

26. “Stand-up is what I am; stand-up is what made me.”

— Bernie Mac

27. “My daughter was a beautiful child.”

— Bernie Mac

28. “I’m an entertainer and I really enjoy entertaining. I think if you’re going to really be what you say you are, you have to really live it, work it, practice it, and think it.”

— Bernie Mac

29. “Making people laugh is what I’ve been doing since I was like four or five years old. I still have a lust, I still have a passion. I don’t care about how I look, I’m dedicated to the laughs.”

— Bernie Mac

30. “When it comes to raising children, I believe in give and take. I give orders and they take ’em.”

— Bernie Mac

31. “Only way you can you get upset is when you expecting something.”

— Bernie Mac

32. “I’m so black, I leave fingerprints on coal.”

— Bernie Mac

33. “My family are police officers, detectives. My brother Mitch is FBI. Mitch is like that – a stern enforcer.”

— Bernie Mac

34. “I love my daughter, but there’s a certain feeling, a certain emotion when you got a granddaughter, you know?”

— Bernie Mac

35. “My grandmother always told me how you start is how you finish.”

— Bernie Mac

36. “I hate to compare anything, especially while I’m promoting. I feel that’s another disrespect, but ‘Ocean’s 13’ is the best movie I’ve ever done in my life. No question.”

— Bernie Mac

37. “I don’t care about how I look; I’m dedicated to the laughs. You know, I used to be a clown, so – my name was Smoothie the Clown. All the training I had, all my training is geared toward making people laugh, and I didn’t care about being cool.”

— Bernie Mac

38. “I want to have fun. Life ain’t no dress rehearsal. I want to have fun. I’m a comedian; I ain’t no politician. So everything I do is with humor, with love.”

— Bernie Mac

39. “I hate to let people down. I was like that in sports and I was like that in comedy. I was like that at work. When I worked General Motors and stuff like that, when I say something, I mean it.”

— Bernie Mac

40. “I get facials. I get a manicure and pedicure every week. I get my hair cut, and I oil myself down from head to toe. I got that from my brother. I was so impressed with how high maintenance he was. When he left the room, you could still smell him for an hour.”

— Bernie Mac

41. “I wasn’t disciplined at all. As good of an athlete as I was, I was not disciplined. Had I had the drive that I have in comedy, and acting, and writing, that’s why I knew it just wasn’t right for me.”

— Bernie Mac

42. “I don’t ever watch myself. By watching, you try to perfect yourself, become a robot.”

— Bernie Mac

43. “I was born October 5, 1957, on the South Side of Chicago, in the Woodlawn area, a neighborhood that hasn’t changed much in forty-five years. Our house was on 66th and Blackstone, but the city tore it down when the rats took over.”

— Bernie Mac

44. “My girlfriend Rhonda, who’s now my wife, I graduated from high school, she got pregnant. My grandfather said, ‘You’ve got to do the right thing.’”

— Bernie Mac

45. “I took my sports experience to my life on stage. That’s why I’m so disciplined. Playing sports, I was always underestimated. I was never picked first to do anything. This always helped me. It taught me how to push myself.”

— Bernie Mac

46. “It was rough being dark. I got heat from my own people more than anyone else. I remember going to my mom and saying, ‘Why am I so black?’ And she said, ‘Because I’m black. You just gotta always work harder than the average bear.’”

— Bernie Mac

47. “I’m not ashamed to tell the truth about what happened in my family. I think that’s what makes my comedy different.”

— Bernie Mac

48. “I came up in the community center. I used to be physical director of the South Central Community Center in Chicago on 83rd. It’s still there. It used to be around there when I was a kid.”

— Bernie Mac

49. “I don’t need to pat myself on the back until my arm breaks. I don’t need any of that.”

— Bernie Mac

50. “Every time you see a black romance, it’s over-the-top. There always has to be extreme hostility between the sexes. He has to cheat. She has to show him how independently strong she is, not just as a woman but as a black woman.”

— Bernie Mac

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