Top 100 Dick Gregory Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Fear and God do not occupy the same space.”

— Dick Gregory

2. “I never learned hate at home, or shame. I had to go to school for that.”

— Dick Gregory

3. “Life isn’t a race. It’s a relay.”

— Dick Gregory

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

— Dick Gregory

5. “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.”

— Dick Gregory

6. “Love is very dangerous if you just have love and don’t have the ability to be lovable.”

— Dick Gregory

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

— Dick Gregory

8. “One of the things I keep learning is that the secret of being happy is doing things for other people.”

— Dick Gregory

9. “When you’ve got something really good, you don’t have to force it on people. They will steal it!”

— Dick Gregory

10. “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.”

— Dick Gregory

11. “Love is man’s natural endowment, but he doesn’t know how to use it. He refuses to recognize the power of love because of his love of power.”

— Dick Gregory

Featured in: Fun Quotes

12. “Education means to bring out wisdom. Indoctrination means to push in knowledge.”

— Dick Gregory

13. “When I lost my rifle, the Army charged me 85 dollars. That is why in the Navy the Captain goes down with the ship.”

— Dick Gregory

14. “The United States is the most dishonest, ungodly, unspiritual nation that ever existed in the history of the planet.”

— Dick Gregory

15. “Revolution ain’t nothing but an extent of evolution; Evolution is a fact of nature. So when old folks tell me that they don’t understand hip hop and the music is too loud, well I guess it means you’re not supposed to be in there.”

— Dick Gregory

16. “It’s cool to be healthy.”

— Dick Gregory

17. “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.”

— Dick Gregory

18. “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.”

— Dick Gregory

19. “The most difficult thing to get people to do is to accept the obvious.”

— Dick Gregory

20. “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.”

— Dick Gregory

21. “If they took all the drugs, nicotine, alcohol and caffeine off the market for six days, they’d have to bring out the tanks to control you.”

— Dick Gregory

22. “At the very last moment, Nature would force you to blink your eye. Nature will protect her own.”

— Dick Gregory

23. “If you can justify killing to eat meat, you can justify the conditions of the ghetto. I cannot justify either one.”

— Dick Gregory

24. “I don’t know why America always thinks she has to run all around the world forcing people to take our way of governance at the barrel of a gun. When you’ve got something really good, you don’t have to force it on people. They will steal it!”

— Dick Gregory

25. “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.”

— Dick Gregory

26. “America is 5 percent of the world’s population and consumes 96 percent of the world’s hard drugs.”

— Dick Gregory

27. “And we love to dance, especially that new one called the Civil War Twist. The Northern part of you stands still while the Southern part tries to secede.”

— Dick Gregory

28. “What price would God demand from the churches for having the audacity to lighten the color of his son’s skin, and straighten out his nappy hair?”

— Dick Gregory

29. “Whenever the dollar is held supreme and capitalistic interests dominate, a higher value will always be placed upon property rights than upon human rights.”

— Dick Gregory

30. “Nature is not affected by finance. If someone offered you ten thousand dollars to let them touch your eyeball without blinking, you would never collect the money. At the very last moment, Nature would force you to blink your eye. Nature will protect her own.”

— Dick Gregory

31. “No being should be killed. No being should be unloved.”

— Dick Gregory

32. “There is a limit on how much information you can keep bottled up.”

— Dick Gregory

33. “To me, seeing a really great comedian is a bit like watching a musician or a poet.”

— Dick Gregory

34. “Why are black folks singing Amazing Grace which is a song about a white slaver’s conversion?”

— Dick Gregory

35. “Baseball is very big with my people. It figures. It’s the only way we can get to shake a bat at a white man without starting a riot.”

— Dick Gregory

36. “The free man is the man with no fears.”

— Dick Gregory

37. “I won’t say I’m out of condition now – but I even puff going downstairs.”

— Dick Gregory

38. “Coconut milk is the only thing on this planet that comes identically to mother’s milk.”

— Dick Gregory

39. “The only good thing about the good old days is they’re gone.”

— Dick Gregory

40. “I am really enjoying the new Martin Luther King Jr stamp – just think about all those white bigots, licking the backside of a black man.”

— Dick Gregory

41. “I waited at the counter of a white restaurant for eleven years. When they finally integrated, they didn’t have what I wanted.”

— Dick Gregory

42. “There’s a God force inside of you that gives you a will to live.”

— Dick Gregory

43. “If you take 12 waters from the coconut – not the ones you buy in the store, although that’s good – but the fresh coconuts, the little brown ones with the three eyes, if you take 12 of those within 24 hours, your blood will go back to the way it was when you were born.”

— Dick Gregory

44. “No kid in the world, no woman in the world should ever raise a hand against a no-good daddy. That’s already been taken care of: A Man Who Destroys His Own Home Shall Inherit the Wind.”

— Dick Gregory

45. “The only person on the planet saying derogatory things about his woman is the black man.”

— Dick Gregory

46. “Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned.”

— Dick Gregory

47. “I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighborhood after dark.”

— Dick Gregory

48. “Laughter is the best way to release tensions and fears.”

— Dick Gregory

49. “When you have a good mother and no father, God kind of sits in. It’s not enough, but it helps.”

— Dick Gregory

50. “My mother was the sweetest lady who ever lived on this planet, but if you tried to tell her that Jesus wasn’t a Christian, she would stomp you to death.”

— Dick Gregory