Truth is the baby of the world. It never gets old.
It was an unwritten law that black comics were not permitted to work white nightclubs. You could sing and you could dance, but you couldn't stand flat-footed and talk; that was a no-no.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the racial barriers faced by black comedians in the entertainment industry, particularly in white venues.
Dick Gregory's quote reflects the systemic racism present in the entertainment industry, particularly during the time when black performers faced significant restrictions. While they could showcase their musical and dance talents, their ability to perform stand-up comedy—a more verbal and narrative art form—was heavily restricted, underscoring broader societal issues of discrimination and exclusion based on race.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion on racial inequality in the arts, this quote can emphasize the historical challenges faced by black performers.
More from Dick Gregory
All quotes →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.
Just being a Negro doesn't qualify you to understand the race situation any more than being sick makes you an expert on medicine.
We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn't think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre.
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.
We thought I was going to be a great athlete, and we were wrong, and I thought I was going to be a great entertainer, and that wasn't it either. I'm going to be an American Citizen. First class.
Similar quotes
It seems this is an age of clever critics who keep bewailing the fact that there are no works worthy of criticism.
I'd love to be an artist always, but if no one wants me, I'd love to write songs for other people, be a manager, nurture new talent.
Beauty is a key to the mystery and a call to transcendence. It is an invitation to savor life and to dream of the future. That is why the beauty of created things can never fully satisfy. It stirs that hidden nostalgia for God which a lover of beauty like Saint Augustine could express in incomparable terms: 'Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you!'.
The room is the beginning of architecture.
The real joy is in constructing a sentence. But I see myself as an actor first because writing is what you do when you are ready and acting is what you do when someone else is ready.
If our titles recall the known myths of antiquity, we have used them again because they are the eternal symbols upon which we must fall back to express basic psychological ideas.