Truth is the baby of the world. It never gets old.
Dick GregoryRead
I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighborhood after dark.
Interpretation
The quote humorously reflects on the skepticism of a child towards the existence of Santa Claus based on societal realities.
Dick Gregory's quote highlights a child's innocent yet critical perspective on the traditional figure of Santa Claus, implying that racial and social contexts play a significant role in shaping beliefs. By suggesting that a white man would not venture into a predominantly Black neighborhood after dark, Gregory uses humor to critique societal issues related to race, safety, and trust.
In practice
In a comedy routine discussing childhood beliefs.
Truth is the baby of the world. It never gets old.
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.
But satire, ever moral, ever new, Delights the reader and instructs him, too. She, if good sense refine her sterling page, Oft shakes some rooted folly of the age.
If I existed 200 years ago, all the other farmers in my community would be like, 'That guy is worthless! He's sitting on a rock, jumping up like a frog, coming up with weird concepts and ideas, making faces, and combing his hair into a giant pastry.' It's a good thing I was born in this century, when superfluous television seems to be part of the economy.
My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now, and we don't know where the hell she is.
I don't want to die now!" he yelled. "I've still got a headache! I don't want to go to heaven with a headache, I'd be all cross and wouldn't enjoy it!
A tragedy is a tragedy, and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid. Give me a choice and I'll take A Midsummer Night's Dream over Hamlet every time. Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh.
People thought I was funny, so I kind of took entertaining for granted... it was inevitable that I'd start giving little performances.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.