Everybody over there, get on up. Everybody out there, get into it. Everybody right there, get involved.

The one thing that can solve most of our problems is dancing.

Hair is the first thing. And teeth the second. Hair and teeth. A man got those two things he's got it all.

I Don’t Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door, I'll Get It Myself)

I named my new son James Joseph Brown II. I think he's going to be a lot better than I was.

I only got a seventh-grade education, but I have a doctorate in funk, and I like to put that to good use

Sometimes you struggle so hard to feed your family one way, you forget to feed them the other way, with spiritual nourishment. Everybody needs that.

My music wasn't written by Mozart, Beethoven, Bach or Schubert. It's written by God and me. They go "a one and a two and up." We start on the downbeat. Bam! And that's where we got them.

I've got soul and I'm super bad.

You got to use what you got to get just what you want.

I taught them everything they know, but not everything I know.

Maybe you who condemn me are in greater fear than I who am condemned.

Every line we succeed in publishing today - no matter how uncertain the future to which we entrust it - is a victory wrenched from the powers of darkness.

God's ear lies close to the believer's lip.

Most times, your blessings are also your curses. And for me, I have this ability to express myself so clearly with pen and paper, but when it comes to expressing myself verbally, I put up a big wall.

I knew every raindrop by its name.

The life of a coquette is one constant lie; and the only rule by which you can form any correct judgment of them is that they are never what they seem.

Why could nothing with Kate be simple? Why couldn’t Jim ever just come by to tell me that he had bowled a perfect game or benched a personal best. Maybe finally asked that weird tiger girl out.

My sense of Los Angeles was very New York provincial, as in 'all those people are crazy out there' (which they are), and stupid (which they're not), and immoral (it's more interesting than that).

On twitter, you may have a zero follower; but in real life, this is not possible because everyone has a shadow!

Organizational busy work tends to expand to fill the working day.