Luck is opportunity meeting up with preparation. So you must prepare yourself to be lucky.
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.
The world is fed by greed.
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.
America has the mightiest military on the planet, and they didn't get there with entertainers.
My wife and I went to jail in Selma. The difference when I was back there recently? White folks? No. Black folks who were not scared. I was behind the president this time. When I was a little boy and ran around with trifling dudes, I was the only one scared of dogs. And I was bitten 14 times! Dogs smell scared. And that's the same thing with people: 50 years ago they smelled fear. There was no fear this time.
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.
Black Americans are the only people in history who are for education instead of liberation. George Washington wasn't beating up on British for the right to open a college! The line isn't "Give me education or give me death."
Black folks tell their kids they have to be twice as good as a white person? Well, if I tell a child of mine that, or that they have to be careful - that this is what a cop would do if you do this - they think something is wrong with them. I tell them death is better.
I would never teach a child of mine to be kind to a cop who would shoot you in the back of the head. I would never have that conversation because children don't hear what you mean, they hear what you say.
The only thing I like about St. Louis is it has the best zoo in America, in Forest Park. Washington University is next door to the zoo. Animals get out, they're going to eat white people before they get to the ghetto!
I was born and raised in St. Louis, and this little town, eight blocks away, place no one ever heard of, a black man there commands the attention of the world for months? That ain't my world.
Don't have a high school diploma? You're in my Cabinet. Why? For 200 years, a lot of Cabinets have existed in our government. Powerful men. Well-educated. So let's try something totally new.
I would have painted the White House black. I would have!
The funniest jokes you know aren't from comics but relatives, friends - from your life. That's the funniest stuff.
Audiences feel no hatred from me. Because I'm not bitter.
White folks are the luckiest people: Finally a black president and he's a behaved one. Went to the best schools, best colleges, never raises his voice. I ran for president in 1968. I tell (audiences) if I won, I would have dug up the Rose Garden and planted watermelon!
I am one of the funniest people on the planet.
I didn't realize, when I decided to be a comic, that a black person had never been allowed to stand flat-footed in America and talk to white folks. It never happened before.
Because you make me laugh don't make you a comic. A comedian is a person who, that's how they make their living.
I consider myself always a humorist. And I think anybody who tells jokes or makes people laugh is humor.
That's easy, to stand in a nightclub, where most of the people that come in, they came to see you.
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.
I believe young voters will either vote for Obama or not vote at all. So the problem is not Obama the problem is the system. If you think about how mess up this country is most folk really don’t have choices.
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.
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