Whoopi Goldberg

"I'm an actor. That's what I do. I'm not a stand-up comic. I do characters. I'm very good. I'll be better. But right now I'm a very good actor."

"But I want very much to be accepted as a good actor, and I have to admit this. Just before the first screenings of The Color Purple, I had some doubts about my name. Steven had told me the billing would read, "And Introducing Whoopi Goldberg as Celie." I had nightmares that when it appeared, a little ripple of laughter would run through the audience and it would grow and grow until it became a horrendous roar of guffaws. Well, I forced myself to go to a screening, and when my name appeared, all I could think was, "Oh, my, how elegant that looks!" And no one laughed at all.""

"Actresses can only play women. I'm an actor, I can play anything."

"The name was a fluke. A joke. It started when I was doing A Christmas Carol in San Diego. We'd sit backstage and talk about names we'd never give our children, like Pork Pie or Independence. Of course, now people are walking around with those names. A woman said to me, "If I was your mother, I would have called you Whoopi, because when you're unhappy you make a sound like a whoopee cushion. It sounds like a fart." It was like "Ha-ha-ha-ha—Whoopi!" So people actually started calling me Whoopi Cushion. After about a year, my mother said, "You won't be taken seriously if you call yourself Whoopi Cushion. So try this combination: Whoopi Goldberg."

"Most of all, I dislike this idea nowadays that if you're a black person in America, then you must be called African-American. Listen, I've visited Africa, and I've got news for everyone: I'm not an African. The Africans know I'm not an African. I'm an American. This is my country. My people helped to build it and we've been here for centuries. Just call me black, if you want to call me anything."

"Thanks! Ever since I was a little kid, I wanted this! You don't know...my brother sitting there, he says "Thank God we don't have to listen to anymore... you can do it now!" My mom's home, everyone's watching... I have to thank the people at Paramount; I have to thank Jerry Zucker for taking the time he took before he decided to use me because he was sure it was for me... I have to thank Patrick Swazye... he was a stand up guy and went to them and said "I wanna do it with her"… I wanna thank Demi... I wanna thank everybody who makes movies... I come from New York; as a kid, I lived in the projects and you're the people I watched...you're the people that made me wanna be an actor... I'm so proud to be here, I'm proud to be an actor and I'm gonna keep on acting, and thank you so much!"

"Normal is nothing more than a cycle on a washing machine."

"I know it wasn't rape-rape. I think it was something else, but I don't believe it was rape-rape."

"For many, many, many years, there were not Jews in Israel. Okay?"

"Well, when I was nine years old, Star Trek came on, I looked at it and I went screaming through the house. 'Come here, mum, everybody, come quick, come quick, there's a black lady on television and she ain't no maid!'"

"So you want to bring this up? Being black, I recognize blackface, this I can say, OK? I know it when I see it."

"Let’s be truthful, the Holocaust isn’t about race, it’s not. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man, that’s what it’s about. These are two groups of white people,"

"As I watched the main rally, I was thrilled to see people like Whoopi Goldberg risking the wrath of the neo-fascists in our midst and risking monetary losses and damage to her career"