“People ask me, when was my best time? I always say, ‘Today.’”
― Paul Mooney
“Listen, we’ve got one little ol’ black president, and white folks are upset, but they’ve had 43.”
― Paul Mooney
“There are still plenty of movie people peddling black stereotypes. I guess Tyler Perry’s probably the most massively successful.”
― Paul Mooney
“When you know who you are, you know who you are. That’s the real dangerous thing in Hollywood, because they all want to create you and mold you.”
― Paul Mooney
“If you have money and you have fame, but you don’t have any confidence in your blackness, then it’s all for nothing.”
― Paul Mooney
“I have such an ego ’cause I’m a double Leo. I can’t let go of me, you know, so it’s very difficult for me to be somebody else and not me. I’m so into me.”
― Paul Mooney
“I don’t want affirmative action – too much affirmative, not enough action.”
― Paul Mooney
“An audience can be like a pack of wolves.”
― Paul Mooney
“If your hair is relaxed, white people are relaxed. If your hair is nappy, they’re not happy.”
― Paul Mooney
“Hillary Clinton could say she was a woman and running for president. And Sarah Palin could say she was a woman and running for vice-president. But Obama couldn’t say, ‘I’m black and I’m running for president.’ It couldn’t come out of his mouth. He couldn’t say that because, if he did, he’d lose votes.”
― Paul Mooney
“I love Obama because he is proof all black people don’t look alike. Nobody every told me, ‘Good morning, Mr. President.’ We don’t all look alike.”
― Paul Mooney
“We have a lot of black Anglo-Saxons. Their skin is black, but their brain is white. When I get real mad at them, I call them ‘graham crackers.’”
― Paul Mooney
“White people are very good at acting like they’re not racist. They deserve an Academy Award for that.”
― Paul Mooney
“A woman can tell me about her having a baby, but I’ll never know what it is to have a baby.”
― Paul Mooney
“People think you’re crazy if you turn money down… people worship money.”
― Paul Mooney
“America has a rap sheet. You can’t police the world and tell the world how to act when you’re just as bad yourself.”
― Paul Mooney
“I think about never losing my voice, never giving in, never selling out, always keeping black, always sticking to the street. Staying neighborhood and not Hollywood.”
― Paul Mooney
“America is racial. America was founded on race. Race is America. The code name for America is ‘race.’”
― Paul Mooney
“What does America love more than one white male?”
― Paul Mooney
“When you watch TV, I didn’t know black people were that happy. I had no idea they were that happy. I’m trying to find them.”
― Paul Mooney
“There’s no such thing as reverse racism.”
― Paul Mooney
“I’m passionate about what I do. I’d be naive to be passive.”
― Paul Mooney
“I am very concerned about Barbara Streisand using the ‘H’ word – ‘honkey.’ That’s what I am concerned about. I am worried about Barbara.”
― Paul Mooney
“I’m as American as apple pie.”
― Paul Mooney
“I’m like the Davy Crockett of comedy… after Davy Crockett opened up the West and helped everybody… they didn’t need him anymore. I freed a lot of comics… if I never would have done comedy, it would’ve been a different art form… I’m sure of it.”
― Paul Mooney
“I have nothing to do with racism in America; it was here when I got here.”
― Paul Mooney
“Julie Christie, I used to hang out with her. She was friends with Richard Pryor and Warren Beatty and all of them. There was a club in Beverly Hills called the Candy Store, a private club. I used to hang out with them all.”
― Paul Mooney
“I read a lot of history. The passive Jews in Germany didn’t survive. The smart ones got out.”
― Paul Mooney
“Robin Williams learned technique. He has the technique of being funny.”
― Paul Mooney
“I was born a comic.”
― Paul Mooney
“I’ve never seen anyone more messed up over success than Richard Pryor. For him, it’s a constant battle between success in the white world and keeping it real for his black self.”
― Paul Mooney
“You white folks see UFOs in your dreams. You don’t hear about Martians in Harlem.”
― Paul Mooney
“What does it mean to be too black for Hollywood? It’s self-explanatory. Hollywood has certain kinds of blacks that they like.”
― Paul Mooney
“If you’re happy with what you’re doing, then you don’t get bored.”
― Paul Mooney
“My comedy is a nuclear bomb inside my mind. It’s a weapon that’s never been tested. It just blows up and flattens everybody.”
― Paul Mooney
“There’s always a message in my comedy.”
― Paul Mooney
“My grandmother was the best. She loved you for you. She loved me for me. She was old-school. They broke the mold with her. They don’t make them like that any more.”
― Paul Mooney
“Handshaking means, ‘I don’t have a weapon.’”
― Paul Mooney
“Hollywood doesn’t even have respect for itself. Hollywood lies to itself.”
― Paul Mooney
“I like when people are trapped in the joke, when there’s no escape. I like to lead people down the wrong path and then trap them.”
― Paul Mooney
“When I was 16 or 17, I saw Lenny Bruce being taken to jail. They took him off stage because he talked about race.”
― Paul Mooney
“Whatever that thing is that white people like in blacks, I don’t have it. Maybe it’s my arrogance or my self-assurance or the way I carry myself, but whatever it is, I don’t have it.”
― Paul Mooney
“I think I have a mental nappy attitude.”
― Paul Mooney
“I do celebrate anything with freedom in it, you know.”
― Paul Mooney
“You got to remember that slavery’s very complex. It has a lot of levels to it.”
― Paul Mooney
“Comedians period, in general, have demons, and myself included.”
― Paul Mooney
“You know who you are. If my mother is a nun and someone comes up to me and they go, ‘Your mother is a prostitute.’ It is not going to bother me, because I know my mother is a nun, she’s not a prostitute.”
― Paul Mooney
“I have known Michael Richards for something like 20 years. We’re friends.”
― Paul Mooney
“I can’t change the past, but one person can change the future – anything can happen.”
― Paul Mooney
“People don’t want to hear the truth; they never do. They wanna live in some kind of fantasy.”
― Paul Mooney
“Sometimes, what you do you have no control over because it’s predestined. It’s gonna happen in spite of you. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
― Paul Mooney
“The king of comedy is dead. Richard Pryor was the king of comedy. The rest of them are the king of copycats.”
― Paul Mooney
“I like comedy, I mean, in all forms.”
― Paul Mooney
“I got my sense of humor from my grandmother. You know, my grandmother was very funny.”
― Paul Mooney
“Arizona has always been anti-black.”
― Paul Mooney
“I could drop dead tomorrow, the truth will be here. Truth is forever; when you read our history, truth is forever, and it always outs itself.”
― Paul Mooney
“Tennessee Williams knew about the South, but he would clean it up and lie about it.”
― Paul Mooney
“When they were making black films in the ’60s and the ’70s, everyone knew their place, if you get my drift. You understand? Everyone knew the rules, and everyone knew their place. Everyone knew what to say. They had the written rules in Hollywood film, and the unwritten rules.”
― Paul Mooney
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