I was so afraid that the athletes wouldn't talk to me because I'm a woman.
The tendency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man... it constitutes the powerful obstacle to culture.
My dream was I was going to be an actor. Racism occurred to me. It dawned on me that I would not be an actor. It occurred to me that I was not white. It occurred to me that being what they call colored, being a Negro, was some kind of a disadvantage.
I think humor is used a lot of the time to keep people from getting too close. Humor side-steps and shifts the meaning.
Race doesn't really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don't have that choice.
A blank wall of social and professional antagonism faces the woman.
These days, it seems that if you're not already in place, you can't get there from here.
Everyone was laughin'. Even that deaf mute boy was breathing heavy and pointing at me. Which is laughter to their kind.
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.
Magic is, in its core, introverted and closed; it's the most closed community ever, and I want to change all that and make it more open. If we want things to change, we have to be more open-minded.
Joking is a barrier between man and the world. Joking is the enemy of love and poetry.
I don't know why there is still any barrier between men and women in terms of achievement and success.
Snobbery just inhibits you.
Laziness is the one common deficiency in mankind that blocks the establishment of a perfect world in which everyone leads a happy life.
I think people are sometime reluctant to read outside of their own race. This is heartbreaking.
You know why I don't like that camera? Because it prevents me from seeing you!
Sometimes when you stand face to face with someone, you cannot see his face.
I think it talks about the fact that there are black people in the world who have tremendous amount of talents and have no channel through which they can those talents.
The chief handicap of the blind is not blindness, but the attitude of seeing people towards them.
I take up the standpoint that the tendency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man, and I come back now to the statement that it constitutes the most powerful obstacle to culture.
The great obstacle to progress is prejudice
Theatre is expensive to go to. I certainly felt when I was growing up that theatre wasn't for us. Theatre still has that stigma to it. A lot of people feel intimidated and underrepresented in theatre.
Like, I played baseball with all boys. They didn't want to play catch with me. I mean, it's the story of everything I've done.
But I found a lot of artists at the Cedar Bar were difficult for me to talk to.
All that hoops are good for is to clean dirty shoes and keep fellows at a distance.
