Chris Rock, born Christopher Julius Rock III, is an acclaimed American comedian, actor, writer, producer, and director, renowned for his incisive humor and social commentary. Rising to fame in the 1990s with his stand-up specials and his tenure on “Saturday Night Live,” Rock’s comedy often delves into issues of race, politics, and relationships with biting wit and sharp observations. He has released several successful stand-up specials, including “Bring the Pain” and “Bigger & Blacker,” cementing his status as one of the greatest comedians of his generation. Additionally, Rock has starred in numerous films and television shows, showcasing his versatility as an entertainer. While his comedy can be controversial and provocative, it has also sparked important discussions about race and society. Rock continues to be a prominent figure in entertainment, known for his fearless approach to comedy and his ability to provoke thought while making audiences laugh.

Chris Rock Quotes

1. “I’d always end up broken down on the highway. When I stood there trying to flag someone down, nobody stopped. But when I pushed my own car, other drivers would get out and push with me. If you want help, help yourself – people like to see that.”
— Chris Rock

2. “Only dumb people try to impress smart people. Smart people just do what they do.”
— Chris Rock

3. “Wealth is not about having a lot of money; it’s about having a lot of options.”
— Chris Rock

4. “There’s math, and everything else is debatable!”
— Chris Rock

5. “You can only offend me if you mean something to me.”
— Chris Rock

6. “Smart is knowing if you’re dumb. Knowing when to shut up and to listen to people that are smarter than you.”
— Chris Rock

7. “If you’re a black Christian, you have a real short memory.”
— Chris Rock

8. “You can never make a woman happy, it’s impossible. I’ve never met a happy woman in my life. They’re always complaining about something.”
— Chris Rock

9. “Don’t argue! You cannot win, you cannot beat a woman in a arguement. It’s impossble you will not win. Cause men, we are handicapped when it comes to arguing cause we have a need to make sense.”
— Chris Rock

10. “I hate niggas! I hate em! I wish they’d let me join the Ku Klux Klan!”
— Chris Rock

11. “A man is only as faithful as his options.”
— Chris Rock

12. “God bless America, and no place else.”
— Chris Rock

13. “Black History Month is in the shortest month of the year, and the coldest-just in case we want to have a parade.”
— Chris Rock

14. “Women need food, water, and compliments That’s right. And an occasional pair of shoes.”
— Chris Rock

15. “I do what I can do when I can do it.”
— Chris Rock

16. “Men do not settle down. Men surrender.”
— Chris Rock

17. “You know the world is messed up when the tallest man in the NBA is Chinese, the best golfer is black, and the best rapper is white.”
— Chris Rock

18. “Most people don’t realize this, but you can eat organic, all natural, gluten-free food without telling everyone around you.”
— Chris Rock

19. “Comedy is the blues for people who can’t sing.”
— Chris Rock

20. “Money is the best lotion in the world.”
— Chris Rock

21. “Stop the violence! Can’t we all just get along?”
— Chris Rock

22. “The government doesn’t want you to use YOUR drugs, they want you to use THEIR drugs.”
— Chris Rock

23. “I met so many people after I got rich and famous, and I learned that you can’t ultimately trust people unless they were your friends when you were broke.”
— Chris Rock

24. “The key to staying together is making sure you guys like each other and need each other.”
— Chris Rock

25. “You don’t pay taxes – they take taxes.”
— Chris Rock

26. “Why do people do yoga? To clear their minds? I embrace the clutter in my head.”
— Chris Rock

27. “If a kid calls his grandma “Mommy” and his mama “Pam”, he’s going to jail!”
— Chris Rock

28. “See, the Black man gotta fly to get to something the white man can walk to.”
— Chris Rock

29. “You could be married and bored or single and lonely. Ain’t no happiness nowhere.”
— Chris Rock

30. “You don’t pay taxes; they take them from your check. That’s not a payment – that’s a ’jack.”
— Chris Rock

31. “You cannot win in a fight against women, cause men have a need to make sense.”
— Chris Rock

32. “White man makes guns? No problem. Black rapper says “gun”? Congressional hearing.”
— Chris Rock

33. “When I hear people talk about juggling, or the sacrifices they make for their children, I look at them like they’re crazy, because ‘sacrifice’ infers that there was something better to do than being with your children.”
— Chris Rock

34. “Yeah, it’s unfair that you can get judged by something you didn’t do, but it’s also unfair that you can inherit money that you didn’t work for.”
— Chris Rock

35. “Everything’s funny – in the right context and done by the right person.”
— Chris Rock

36. “Music is the soundtrack to the crappy movie that is my life.”
— Chris Rock

37. “When you’re white, the sky’s the limit. When you’re black, the limit’s the sky.”
— Chris Rock

38. “When I do stand-up, I’m basically doing a one-man show.”
— Chris Rock

39. “We got no wealthy black people. We got rich people. Shaq is rich. The guy who signs his checks is wealthy.”
— Chris Rock

40. “You know the world’s gone mad when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the Swiss hold the America’s Cup, France is accusing the USA of arrogance and the Germans don’t want to go to war !”
— Chris Rock

41. “If you can keep your son off the pipe and your daughter off the pole, you’re ahead of the game.”
— Chris Rock

42. “You know those guys that go to the strip club at the daytime? If you’re at a strip club, and the sun is out, you got some problems!”
— Chris Rock

43. “You know what GED stands for? Good Enough Diploma.”
— Chris Rock

44. “Never go to clubs with metal detectors. Sure it feels safe inside. But what about all those niggas waiting outside with guns? They know you ain’t got one.”
— Chris Rock

45. “Only a woman can make you feel wrong for doing something right.”
— Chris Rock

46. “Unlike flying or astral projection, walking through walls is an earthbound pursuit…”
— Chris Rock

47. “Every town has the same two malls: the one white people go to and the one white people used to go to.”
— Chris Rock

48. “You got a gun, you don’t have to work out.”
— Chris Rock

49. “I think it’s better to have ideas. You can change an idea; changing a belief is trickier.”
— Chris Rock

50. “I see as white people finding loopholes in the slavery laws.”
— Chris Rock

51. “I love having somebody there – that companion thing. You know who you’re going to eat with, who you’re going to see a movie with.”
— Chris Rock

52. “You know you’re rich when you have to drive for a half hour to get to your house once you’re on your property.”
— Chris Rock

53. “Whenever I go out with other married couples, I like to bring along a single crackhead. Just to spice things up.”
— Chris Rock

54. “If your work is so smart that only smart people get it, it’s not that smart.”
— Chris Rock

55. “I think all the funny people were bullied. When they talk about outlawing bullying, it’s like, what? You want no Comedy Central?”
— Chris Rock

56. “Do you know what the good side of crack is? If you’re up at the right hour, you can get a VCR for $1.50. You can furnish your whole house for $10.95.”
— Chris Rock

57. “If Bill Gates woke up with Oprah’s money he’d jump out the window.”
— Chris Rock

58. “I saw the yearbook picture. There was six of them! I ain’t have six friends in high school, I don’t have six friends now! That’s three on three with a half court.”
— Chris Rock

59. “There are only three things women need in life: food, water, and compliments.”
— Chris Rock

60. “I got love from my family. I don’t really need love from a paper, you know what I mean? I can’t get too happy because somebody said something nice about me. I appreciate it, but let’s not get it twisted – this is not changing my life.”
— Chris Rock

61. “I don’t need a president with a bucket list!”
— Chris Rock

62. “And even if you get shot by a stray bullet, you don’t gotta go to no doctor to get it taken out, whoever shot you will take they bullet back! “I believe you have my property!””
— Chris Rock

63. “When you meet somebody for the first time, you’re not meeting them, you’re meeting their representative.”
— Chris Rock

64. “I was at Michael Jackson’s house, and this kid runs out, ‘Wait, save me!’”
— Chris Rock

65. “If you’re black, you got to look at America a little bit different. You got to look at America like the uncle who paid for you to go to college, but who molested you.”
— Chris Rock

66. “I believe you have my property!”
— Chris Rock

67. “Even if you meet the perfect person, it ain’t gonna be at the perfect time. You’re married, they’re single. That’s right. You’re Jewish, they’re Palestinian. You’re a Mexican, they’re a raccoon. You’re a black woman, he’s a black man.”
— Chris Rock

68. “The two best things you can do for a person is have sex or make them laugh.”
— Chris Rock

69. “I always say about my daughters, they save me from my miserable self. They take me out, you know, a comedian, you could live in your head a lot. And you’re writing and you’re doubting. But when I’m with my kids and my family, it’s all about them.”
— Chris Rock

70. “They don’t want you to vote. If they did, we wouldn’t vote on a Tuesday. In November. You ever throw a party on a Tuesday? No. Because nobody would come.”
— Chris Rock

71. “Anything you can suck at should make you nervous.”
— Chris Rock

72. “You can’t be happy that fire cooks your food and be mad it burns your fingertips.”
— Chris Rock

73. “No matter what happens or how difficult things become, you will eventually feel better.”
— Chris Rock

74. “Black comics, they only watch Black comedians. You’re a comedian; you’re not just a Black comedian. You’re a comedian. I try to get that through to everybody.”
— Chris Rock

75. “Anyone who makes up their mind about an issue before they hear the issue is a fool.”
— Chris Rock

76. “No matter what kind of backgrounds two men are from, if you go, ‘Hey, man, women are crazy,’ you’ve got a friend.”
— Chris Rock

77. “You won’t be able to take your eyes off the next four presenters: Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz.”
— Chris Rock

78. “A cat, by any other name, is still a sneaky little furball that barfs on the furniture.”
— Chris Rock

79. “I just remember that whenever I got really mad or passionate, like in an argument, people would laugh, and I’d be dead serious. It would happen a lot. So it was like, Gee, I’ve got something here.”
— Chris Rock

80. “If you properly clean a room, it gets dirtier before it gets cleaner.”
— Chris Rock

81. “So, to say Barack Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress.”
— Chris Rock

82. “If you see a black woman with an overweight white man, you know she got effed up credit!”
— Chris Rock

83. “Kids always act up the most before they go to sleep.”
— Chris Rock

84. “Stand-up comedy is like the lowest medium in all of show business in levels of respect.”
— Chris Rock

85. “When you’re doing a big-budget movie and you’re four on the call sheet, you’ve got a lot of free time.”
— Chris Rock

86. “I live way below my means.”
— Chris Rock

87. “When you make drama you are like Picasso. Drama is whatever you want it to be.”
— Chris Rock

88. “George Bush hates midgets.”
— Chris Rock

89. “It’s my real name. My mother’s name is Rose Rock. It was the worst name as a kid to have. They called me Piece of the Rock, Plymouth Rock, Joe Rockid, and Flintstones. Now they call me Mister Rock.”
— Chris Rock

90. “Comedians are the one who have to tell the emperor he has no clothes on.”
— Chris Rock

91. “One of my daughters told me the other day, “Kevin Hart is funnier than you, Daddy.” I told her, “Does Kevin Hart make you pancakes?””
— Chris Rock

92. “Gay people got a right to be as miserable as everybody else.”
— Chris Rock

93. “I never really write the jokes. I just sit down over a week or two and try to figure out what I want to talk about. Once I narrow that down, then I start working on the material, like “How do I make this stuff funny?””
— Chris Rock

94. “The only plan I have is to not do anything I don’t want to do – and to never work just for money.”
— Chris Rock

95. “You can’t think the thoughts you want to think if you think you’re being watched.”
— Chris Rock

96. “The thing I try to get across to the writers – and I do a lot of writing, too – is that when I do stand-up, nothing I talk about is funny. Everything is really sad and tragic and then I make it funny.”
— Chris Rock

97. “If you wanna get away with murder, all you gotta do is shoot somebody in the head and put a demo tape in their pocket! “This is a rap killing. Let’s go home!””
— Chris Rock

98. “Community college is like a disco with books: “Here’s ten dollars; let me get my learn on!””
— Chris Rock

99. “A black Christian is like a black person with no memory.”
— Chris Rock

100. “Remember when we was young, everybody used to have these arguments about who’s better, Michael Jackson or Prince? Prince won!”
— Chris Rock

101. “I always say there’s no more little girls, just boys with breasts. Girls act like boys nowadays. Teenage girls, they go after boys. They’re predatory just like boys. My goal is to keep my girls, girls.”
— Chris Rock

102. “Is America ready for a black president? Well, I say we just had a retarded one. When did being black become a bigger deterrent than being retarded?”
— Chris Rock

103. “We were so poor my daddy unplugged the clocks when we went to bed.”
— Chris Rock

104. “There are people who would like to get rid of minimum wage. But we have to have it, because if we didn’t some people would not get paid money. They would work all week for two loaves of bread and some Spam.”
— Chris Rock

105. “America is the only place where people go hunting on a full stomach.”
— Chris Rock

106. “I love my life, but I don’t think I’m any happier than my younger brother Andre, who drives a garbage truck.”
— Chris Rock

107. “When you have kids, there’s no such thing as quality time. There’s just time. There’s no, ‘Ooh, his graduation’s better than going to the mall.’ It’s all kind of equal. Changing her diaper and her winning a contest – it’s all good.”
— Chris Rock

108. “It’s easier to get on show business, the hard part is to maintain. Nobody stays famous forever.”
— Chris Rock

109. “Men lie the most, women tell the biggest lies.”
— Chris Rock

110. “I can’t even put gas in my plane!”
— Chris Rock

111. “Gun control? We need bullet control! I think every bullet should cost 5,000 dollars. Because if a bullet cost five thousand dollar, we wouldn’t have any innocent bystanders.”
— Chris Rock

112. “After I left high school and got my GED, I studied broadcast journalism for a year at a community college.”
— Chris Rock

113. “My mother always says: “You know better, so you’ll be punished. Your friends don’t know better, so they won’t be punished. They can go snatch chains and they’ll be fine. But if you snatch chains, you’ll end up in jail because you know better.””
— Chris Rock

114. “Yeah, I love being famous. It’s almost like being white, y’know?”
— Chris Rock

115. “Women can have all the evidence but they still want the confession.”
— Chris Rock

116. “That’s a sure sign someone is going crazy – when he refers to himself in the third person, talks in low tones, and walks around wearing shades all day!”
— Chris Rock

117. “When you’ve been on a ghetto diet your entire life, you’re just happy to get a large soda instead of a medium.”
— Chris Rock

118. “Early in my career it was very important that I gain the reputation. I haven’t been on the road in two or three years, but when I say tickets are on sale, I know they’re going to be gone, even if my movie bombed or my TV show sucked.”
— Chris Rock

119. “I’m happy if everybody else is. I’m a big brother, the oldest. If you’re happy and I’m not, I’m cool with that. If I’m happy and you’re not, I’m sad.”
— Chris Rock

120. “Who’s judging American Idol? Paula Abdul? Paula Abdul judging a singing contest is like Christopher Reeve judging a dance contest!”
— Chris Rock

121. “Daddy pays for the water, daddy pays for the gas, daddy pays for the electricity, and if daddy didn’t pay for the electricity, he’d pay for the candle on your nightstand, so you can study for the big test tomorrow.”
— Chris Rock

122. “I know what you’re thinking: why is Chris Rock bagging groceries? But I dropped out of high school in the tenth grade, so if I couldn’t tell jokes this is exactly what I’d be doing.”
— Chris Rock

123. “When I do something good, the audience lets me know immediately. They laugh. That’s it.”
— Chris Rock

124. “If you told me two years I would miss the greatest basketball game ever to hang out with Nathan Lane, I’d say, ‘You’re crazy!’”
— Chris Rock

125. “I pride myself on being the guy who can do Def Comedy Jam and Charlie Rose. And do well on both.”
— Chris Rock

126. “If a homeless person has a funny sign, he hasn’t been homeless for that long. A real homeless person is too hungry to be funny.”
— Chris Rock

127. “Black people dominate sports in the United States. 20% of the population and 90% of the final four.”
— Chris Rock

128. “Most parts in comedy, they’re not really written for men. They’re written for, like, these boy-men.”
— Chris Rock

129. “You’re not famous unless people’s mothers know who you are. Everybody else, you think you’re famous, but you’re just hot, and heat cools off.”
— Chris Rock

130. “Eddie Murphy is to comedians what Nicki Minaj is to Spanx.”
— Chris Rock

131. “They’re working their way down. Next year, Todd Bridges gets the award. When I was a kid I wanted to be Eddie Murphy and now I’m a rip-off of Eddie Murphy.”
— Chris Rock

132. “My mother is the kind of woman you don’t want to be in line behind at the supermarket. She has coupons for coupons.”
— Chris Rock

133. “Happy white peoples independence day the slaves weren’t free but I’m sure they enjoyed fireworks.”
— Chris Rock

134. “Does having a wife and kids change your act? Yes, but only in the best way. It gives you weight and authority. It also makes you closer to the audience because the audience is married and has kids.”
— Chris Rock

135. “The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.”
— Chris Rock

136. “Black movies don’t have real names, they have names like Barbershop. That’s not a name, that’s just a location.”
— Chris Rock

137. “I’m looking forward to not being tired around my child. My father was tired a lot. I want to play ball with my child without having to grab my shoulder because I’m not physically fit. And I want to really teach my child and become his or her friend.”
— Chris Rock

138. “Everyone has favorite criminals. Mine are pimps. We can all rob a bank; we can all sell drugs. Being a pimp is a whole other thing.”
— Chris Rock

139. “If you want to prevent abortions, you make sure everyone has health care, a high school education and birth control. Not the exact opposite.”
— Chris Rock

140. “The thing about having an audience right there laughing is that critics can write what they want, but the proof is right there in front of you.”
— Chris Rock

141. “I’m an independent, but I got to admit I lean Democratic.”
— Chris Rock

142. “Oprah is so rich, I saw John Kerry proposing to her.”
— Chris Rock

143. “Success is just hanging out with my kids. I mean, I always say if you have options, you’re rich. To me, success is the fact that hey, I just did a movie and maybe I’ll do some stand up, maybe I’ll will write a book or maybe I will do a play.”
— Chris Rock

144. “Pretty girls have problems too.”
— Chris Rock

145. “I never had the confidence to say I was going to be in front of the camera as a comedian until I saw Eddie Murphy years later.”
— Chris Rock

146. “You can write a great country record and still be angry. Who’s angrier than Toby Keith? He’s angrier than the average 10 rappers.”
— Chris Rock

147. “Only married people understand you can be miserable and happy at the same time.”
— Chris Rock

148. “It’s weird with stand-up comedy. It doesn’t really translate worldwide. I want to figure out how do I make it worldwide. Do a special in Africa. Can’t beat that. Pull that off, then I will have done something.”
— Chris Rock

149. “I’ve been married for 10 years and, you know, it’s hard, you spruce it up and you go places. How do you spruce up anything? Artificially. You go places and do things.”
— Chris Rock

150. “When people try to read between the lines – critics, they have a job. Their job is to make something bigger than it is.”
— Chris Rock