I get that racism exists, but it’s not a catalyst for my content. I don’t need to talk about race to have material. My style of comedy is more self-deprecating. I think that makes me more relatable. When you deal with ‚topics‘ – race, white versus black – you’re not separating from the pack. You’re doing what everybody else is doing.

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

Crankiness is at the essence of all comedy. My wife and I were discussing the different types of cranky. There’s entertaining cranky, annoying cranky, angry cranky.

I’ve been thinking of humorous things since I was… I can’t remember when. All the way through elementary school, all the way through junior high, all the way through high school, through college and after college, I was thinking of the same kinds of things that I say in front of an audience now.

To like an individual because he’s black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn’t white.

It’s easy being a humorist when you’ve got the whole government working for you.

The immigration issue is, I recognize, one that generates a lot of passion, but it does not make sense for us to want to push talent out.

As much as I’m a black person from America, I’m a black person from Africa, too.

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.

If you shoot at mimes, should you use a silencer?

There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

Children are all foreigners.

No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive.

Why, if someone is good in one field can they not be accepted or given the slightest opportunity to express and be creative in other fields?

Men and women aren’t the same. And they won’t be the same. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be treated fairly.

Sometimes I feel like rap music is almost the key to stopping racism.

To such an extent does nature delight and abound in variety that among her trees there is not one plant to be found which is exactly like another; and not only among the plants, but among the boughs, the leaves and the fruits, you will not find one which is exactly similar to another.

A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.

We need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. This isn’t a matter of political correctness. It’s a matter of understanding what makes us strong. The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith.

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.

When I was on TV in the ’80s, I wasn’t thinking, ‚There’s a 10-year-old kid watching this and in 15 years, he’s gonna be doing stuff that was influenced by me.‘ I was trying to get my five minutes together. So now that those people are comedians and they’re influenced by me – it’s bizarre.

I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man.

People who bowl vote. Bowlers are not the cultural elite.

I never wanted to look pretty on stage and sing about something we’ve all heard about before.

For a while… to be an evangelical meant you were a white Republican, and you were against this and against that. I don’t want to be put into that mold, because then people judge you before they even listen… I don’t want to divide the very people I am trying to reach.

My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too.

When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike.

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that. But everyone else is kind of, with their calculating – is this the exact right mix? I think that’s – to me it’s anti-comedy. It’s more about PC-nonsense.

Caesar was a man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

You know what should be banned? Stuff that’s whack. The world is controversial. The world is classist. The world is racist.

When you’re traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually. Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents. I like to create characters based on different people I’ve met, and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events.

The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.

I’m trying to show everybody that I’m a girl, and I’m five foot four, and you can do anything you want, no matter your gender. It’s your world, too!

Unfortunately, the people of Louisiana are not racists.

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.

No intelligent black man or black woman in his or her right black mind wants white boys and white girls coming to their homes to marry their black sons and daughters.

The fact that over 50 per cent of the residents of Toronto are not from Canada, that is always a good thing, creatively, and for food especially. That is easily a city’s biggest strength, and it is Toronto’s unique strength.

We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.

Here’s the thing: every office I’ve run for I was the first to win. First person of color. First woman. First woman of color. Every time.

When I do a picture and it’s 90% black, like ‚Bird,‘ I use 90% black people.

Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor – over each other.

SNL is a home. You’ve got all of your brothers and sisters there, and it’s a great time.

Racism, xenophobia and unfair discrimination have spawned slavery, when human beings have bought and sold and owned and branded fellow human beings as if they were so many beasts of burden.

Sometimes it’s a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.

If you’re gonna make connections which are innovative… you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does.

Only one in four jokes ever works, and I still can’t predict what people will laugh at.

Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.

A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.

America is known as a country that welcomes people to its shores. All kinds of people. The image of the Statue of Liberty with Emma Lazarus‘ famous poem. She lifts her lamp and welcomes people to the golden shore, where they will not experience prejudice because of the color of their skin, the religious faith that they follow.

Boxing is a lot of white men watching two black men beat each other up.

The magic of America is that we’re a free and open society with a mixed population. Part of our security is our freedom.

People look at the same passage, and one person will say this is the best thing he’s ever read, and another person will say it’s absolutely idiotic. I mean, there’s no way to reconcile those two things. You just have to forget the whole business of what people are saying.

When I was a child I asked my mother what homosexuality was about and she said – and this was 100 years ago in Germany and she was very open-minded – ‚It’s like hair color. It’s nothing. Some people are blond and some people have dark hair. It’s not a subject.‘ This was a very healthy attitude.

I think unconscious bias is one of the hardest things to get at.

There’s nothing like white trash at the White House.

To start with, I love New York… It’s a little bit of the whole world… In New York, the whole world comes to you.

There are plenty of people who are, I think, completely racist who love hip-hop.

I do not expect the white media to create positive black male images.

Well I do think, when there are more women, that the tone of the conversation changes, and also the goals of the conversation change. But it doesn’t mean that the whole world would be a lot better if it were totally run by women. If you think that, you’ve forgotten high school.

I’ve been really fortunate to be able to do different kinds of films in different scales, different genres, different kinds of roles, and that is important to me.