Sourced

• We've got to take the neighborhood back. We've got to go in there. Just forget telling your child to go to the Peace Corps. It's right around the corner. It's standing on the corner. It can't speak English. It doesn't want to speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk. "Why you ain't where you is go." I don't know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can't land a plane with "why you ain't…". You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. There is no Bible that has that kind of language. Where did these people get the idea that they're moving ahead on this? Well, they know they're not, they're just hanging out in the same place, five or six generations sitting in the projects when you're just supposed to stay there long enough to get a job and move out.
  • "Dr Bill Cosby Speaks at the 50th Anniversary commemoration of the Brown vs Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court Decision," known as the "Pound Cake" speech (May 2004). Full text at Wikisource.

• I am not interested in statistics that tell me things are not as bad as they seem. Things are horrible. I have met people crying about what is happening, but there is no solution yet. Our children are trying to tell us something, and we are not listening. I don't care what the statistics say.
  • "Paths to Success: A Forum on African American Men" panel discussion (July 18, 2006), quoted in
    

    Himself (1983)

    • My father established our relationship when I was seven years old. He looked at me and said, "You know, I brought you in this world, and I can take you out. And it don't make no difference to me, I'll make another one look just like you."
    
    
    • I said to a guy, I said, "Tell me, what is it about cocaine that makes it so wonderful?", and he said, "Well, it intensifies your personality." I said, "Yes, but what if you're an asshole?"
    
    
    • A person with no children says, "Well I just love children," and you say "Why?" and they say, "Because a child is so truthful, that's what I love about 'em — they tell the truth." That's a lie, I've got five of 'em. The only time they tell the truth is if they're having pain.
    
    
    • My wife stood up in the stirrups, grabbed my bottom lip and said "I want morphine!" I said "But, dear —" [vigorously breathing]. She said "You shut up! YOU did this to me!" And on the next contraction she told everybody in the delivery room that my parents were never married.
    
    
    • Fathers are the geniuses of the house because only a person as intelligent as we could fake such stupidity.
    
    
    • I'm not the boss of my house. I don't know how I lost it, I don't know when I lost it, I don't really think I ever had it. But I've seen the bosses job...and I don't want it!
    
    
    • You know what my father's favorite game is? "Come here and pull my finger."
    
    

    Unsourced

    • Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.
    
    
    • We see a successful, elegant man now, but as a child, an adolescent, his life was not a done deal. Sidney respected his mistakes. When failure came, he never said, This is too difficult, too hard', he had the resiliency to try again. His life is somewhere between astounding and unbelievable.
    
    

    Misattributions

    • The very first law in advertising is to avoid the concrete promise and cultivate the delightfully vague.
      • Originally from Stuart Chase
    
    
    • Y'see, the kids, they listen to the rap music, which gives them the brain damage. With their hippin' and their hoppin', and their bippin', and their boppin'... so they don't know what the jazz is all about! You see, Jazz is like a Jello Pudding pop — no! Actually, it's more like Kodak film — no! Actually, jazz is like the new Coke; it'll be around forever! Heh heh heh...
      • Spoof of Bill Cosby, The Simpsons, 'Round Springfield
    
    
    • (Referring to Pokémon) Pokeyman?! Pokeyman with the "pokey" and the "man" and the thing where the guy comes out of the thing and then he (mumbles incoherently, flaps ears) oh ah ah ah ah!
      • Spoof of Bill Cosby, The Simpsons, Children of a Lesser Clod