Thank God that I had the ability to understand that I had a different beat and that I was a drummer.

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.

You are a divine being. You matter, you count. You come from realms of unimaginable power and light, and you will return to those realms.

The car bomb is the poor man’s air force.

Knowledge is the treasure of a wise man.

If you're being attacked from all sides, it's possible you're doing something right; it's also possible that you are doing everything wrong.

Most of the people I know in bands, all they are concerned about is getting to do the next record.

OK, you're alive. How aware are you, of anything? Can you see eternity? Do you live in the land of the perpetually happy?

The growth of love is not a straight line, but a series of hills and valleys.

As technology advances at an alarming pace, the place of drawing remains as valid as ever in the creation of art and architecture.

Great souls are always loyally submissive, reverent to what is over them: only small mean souls are otherwise.

Listen, if you start worrying about the people in the stands, before too long you're up in the stands with them.