My son don't have to say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud. He don't have to be called those crazy names.

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.

Do not try to be the best, but never forget to try your best.

I let him run on, this papier-maché Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.

Wo men shi jie bai xiong di-we are more than brothers, Will.

Any woman who calls herself a post-feminist should keep her Wonderbra and burn her brains.

Banks have never made money in the history of banking, losing the equivalent of all their past profits periodically - while bankers strike it rich.

Exhibitionism is like a drug. Hooked in adolescence I was now taking doses so massive they would have killed a novice.

Today I will multiply my value a hundredfold.

In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

When it don’t rain, the roof don’t leak; when it rains, I can’t fix it nohow.

What's the point of a spark of light if it stands alone? The key is, and will always be, synergy. Without it, each and every light being will forever feel broken, misplaced, and internally crippled.