Humor & Life Quote by Dick Gregory

Gregory lands the joke like a small bomb: the problem with taxes isn’t the bill, it’s the betrayal. By calling his own country not “friendly,” he flips the usual patriotic script. Taxes are supposed to be the price of membership; Gregory treats them like ransom paid to an occupying power. That’s not just a punchline, it’s an accusation.

The brilliance is in the casual phrasing. “I wouldn’t mind” sounds almost neighborly, like he’s willing to be reasonable. Then the line swerves into geopolitical language - “a friendly country” - as if the U.S. government were a foreign regime. The laugh comes from the absurdity of imagining America as somewhere you’d need diplomatic relations with. The sting comes from realizing why that absurdity feels accurate for Black Americans living through segregation, police violence, and systemic exclusion. If the state doesn’t protect you, doesn’t serve you, and often targets you, the whole civic bargain collapses.

Context matters: Gregory wasn’t only a comedian; he was a civil rights activist who used mainstream stages to smuggle radical clarity into living rooms. The line operates as both satire and survival tactic. Humor becomes a way to say, publicly, what could otherwise be dismissed as ingratitude or anger: I’m asked to fund a system that treats me like an enemy combatant.

It’s cynicism with a purpose - not to disengage, but to expose the moral deficit behind “pay your share.”