Bert Williams

“It is no disgrace to be a Negro, but it is very inconvenient.”

“The man with the real sense of humor is the man who can put himself in the spectator's place and laugh at his own misfortune.”

“I have never been able to discover that there was anything disgraceful in being a colored man. But I have often found it inconvenient - in America.”

“I was thinking that if I had been a white man, I might have been a great comedian. But I am a Negro. I have to play in the backyard.”

“Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.”

“The first thing I do in the morning is to see if my name is in the obituary column. If it isn't, I go to work.”

“I'm not saying that the black man is the salt of the earth, I'm saying he is the pepper.”

“There's no such thing as a new joke. It's all in the way you tell it.”

“I ain't never done nothin' to nobody, I ain't never got nothin' from nobody, no time. And until I get somethin' from somebody, sometime, I don't intend to do nothin' for nobody, no time.”

“I'd rather be a lamppost in New York than the mayor of Philadelphia.”