Top 135 Quotes & Sayings by Larry Wilmore - Page 2

As long as you say I'm the guy who's real about it, I have no problem being the person who people look to to talk about race.

I was taught from a very early age that I had to work twice as hard to get half as much. That was the world I grew up in - a very strong work ethic.

Even though you're in charge, you're not completely in ownership. You know, the audience takes a huge ownership of your show. Look at comments about shows and tell me if I'm wrong. Look at shows like 'The Walking Dead' and the ownership that the audience has of that show.

Remember, MTV would only show white videos for a long time. Can you imagine that? That was the '80s when that happened. It's hard to even think of that now, you know?

Richard Pryor was my hero. Richard Pryor was keeping it 100.

Any voting group has an interest that they want from politicians. That's why politicians have to talk to different people. But to reduce the black interest to free stuff is so insulting. It just makes me apoplectic.

There's something about a new family moving into the White House that's kind of interesting, even if you didn't vote for them.

I've pitched many things that have not gone, but every year, I'm in that pilot game like a lot of other writers in Hollywood.

I'd love to set up shop somewhere and develop projects - film, TV, digital would be a fun thing to do.

MSNBC got rid of so many black people, I thought Boko Haram was running that network.

I love the word 'dearth,' by the way. It's one of my favorite words.

Some things are so tragic that you don't know what's funny in it, and some things are so ridiculous you don't know if it's worth talking about it.

Every television show is sentenced to death - time and date of execution unknown.

No matter what his crimes were, Alton Sterling did not deserve to be executed for them. Look, guys, the punishment for resisting arrest shouldn't be death. The punishment for selling bootleg CDs shouldn't be death. The punishment for having a gun in an open-carry state shouldn't be death. The punishment for being a black man shouldn't be death.

I have a free voice. I have a free mind. I have freedom of expression.

I've always watched the political shows.

I really love storytelling.

I do not look to Hollywood to give me character clues.

When most people become president, even if you disagree with their ideology, you can still agree that they would have the competence to run something... With Trump, I do not have the confidence of that at all.

I don't think I ever intend to provoke outrage, but I don't mind being provocative in content.

I just feel it's important to make sure that behind the scenes is as filled with diverse voices as in front of the scene is.

I didn't get into comedy to talk about violent death all the time.

My white counterparts are always pushing the line, and they are fearless, so why can't I do that, too?

When you have somebody like a Donald Trump - he made no bones about trying to disprove Barack Obama's Americanism in trying to make him out to be some foreigner that was born in Kenya. I thought that to be very racist.

When you work in television, you're in the writer's room all the time.

We had a segment called Tampon Tuesdays that I was very proud of; that was hilarious because there are a lot of women's issues out there that a lot of people don't know about because they're not women, and they don't have to go through them.

You never know in TV - sometimes you're on at the wrong time at the wrong place. Sometimes you don't get a chance to catch on.

I'm not really a self-promoter-type person.

Not everybody's gonna get your vision.

I really don't have a need to be on TV all that much, to be honest with you.

I'm actually a big fan of having all the different types of voices on television. I think it gives people a nice little buffet that they can just pick and choose how they want to get their news and entertainment, I guess.

Maybe I'll write an episode of 'Black-ish' about a guy being fired in late-night.

I set out to have a diverse staff on the 'Bernie Mac Show.'

The thing that's worked for me is having as much of a connection to the material as possible. And sometimes the material requires a more straightforward approach, and sometimes it requires a little more silliness, you know?

I'm understated in my approach.

The last thing I would ever do is try to become a network programmer.

I have this rule. It's called 'Top Dog-Underdog:' Underdog gets to make fun of Top Dog, but Top Dog can't make fun of Underdog. But you know what? You get Top Dog, you get to be Top Dog. Congratulations! And that dynamic happens not just in race but in many different ways. It's like the male-female dynamic.

You never want to defend a joke. People get to choose whether or not to laugh and whether or not they think something is funny.

I grew up in California. I was outside of the city, not directly in it. So I did have an experience of the sky, but for me, it was the idea of space exploration that fueled my interest. I grew up in that age of the astronauts, and I was fascinated that we could leave the Earth.

When you work in television you're in the writer's room all the time. You can't take 10 days or a week to go watch movies. Nobody's going to sign up for that. But it's something I had always thought if I was every asked I would definitely do it if I had the time to do it.

Catholic and Jew - it's very closely related, a lot of holidays, a lot of guilt, a lot of the same things going on.

You go, dark energy! Go on, dark matter. They don't understand you, dark matter. They don't get you.

You know that sadness and rage you feel about your money? That's the way some of us feel about people.

I like to get things going. I get so many different ideas, whether it's film, TV, whatever.

I love writing family stories.

When I was born there were still different drinking fountains you had to drink out of.

The Oscar nominations are out, and they're so white a grand jury has decided not to indict them.

"Keep it 100" means keeping it 100 percent real. It comes from the expression ... "keeping it real," which means you are being completely honest and 100 percent real means you are really being honest, which is kind of a contradiction of sorts. You're either being honest or you're not.

It was tough when people would say, "Aren't you so excited?" about the new show and I couldn't really say, "Yes, well, I'm going through a divorce right now, too."

I started as a standup comic and an actor.

I don't care if my opinion falls on the right or the left. I'm more of what I call a passionate centrist. I just believe what I believe. I'm not trying to prove anything for the right or the left. Which gives me freedom to make jokes about either side, too.

Even though you're in charge you're not completely in ownership. You know, the audience takes a huge ownership of your show.

Saying slavery was the cause of secession isn't politically correct; it's correct correct.

There's a lot of magic in science, so to speak.

When I was a kid, I was very much interested in magic and science. They fueled interest in one another.

I've always felt like I had a guardian angel in some of those ways.

My basic political philosophy is, I ain't mad at that. Which basically means I don't have to have a strong opinion about everything. I'm too tired most of the time. Why do I have to take a stand on everything? Sometimes I'm just not mad at it. Like, What do you think about gay marriage? I ain't mad at you, you're gay and you're married: I ain't mad at you, go do it.

When I was a kid, there was kind of a given that there were some really bad, racist police out there. That's just what America was like when I was a kid.

I don't have that kind of Southern experience, of the fire-and-brimstone preacher type of thing. Certainly not in my comedy. I come more from the guilt-ridden, neurotic type of [ - ] I have more in common with the Jewish brand of comedy.

I do believe that the Mormon Church is at kind of an awakening, in two different ways: More people are becoming aware of it, and it's becoming a force to be reckoned with. There's a lot of Mormon converts globally.