What everybody's looking for today, they're looking for escape-ism.

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.

The past is a guidepost not a hitching post.

All art is concerned with coming into being.

The things two people do to each other they remember. If they stay together, it's not because they forget; it's because they forgive.

The illusion of purpose is to be avoided. The illuion of lack of purpose is to be avoided.

There is no fire like passion: there is no evil and hatred.

Man is firmly convinced that he is awake; in reality he is caught in a net of sleep and dreams which he has unconsciously woven himself.

Struggles only move forward when decent men and women step forward and say, 'enough is enough and no more.'

I was very protective of my father and I didn't like these people who hung around outside all day. They creeped me out.

One should never allow chaos to develop in order to avoid going to war, because one does not avoid a war but instead puts it off to his disadvantage

It's like the high school production of something you saw at Steppenwolf, with the most gifted students in drama class playing the John Malkovich and Joan Allen roles.