You only live once.

I want to say to you, Help yourself, so you can help someone else.

I did the thing with bonds, which was about 30 million dollars, and didn't get none of the money on them.

When I'm on stage, I'm trying to do one thing: bring people joy. Just like church does. People don't go to church to find trouble, they go there to lose it.

I had to tell about my colonic, which expresses the fact why I'm so neat today as opposed to a few years ago. I never knew that the weight made that much difference.

I've been held responsible for taxes I know nothing about.

Like Christ said, love thee one another. I learned to do that, and I learned to respect and be appreciative and thankful for what I had.

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.

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.

I've been knocked down a lot of times.

I used to think like Moses. That knocked me down for a couple years and put me in prison. Then I start thinking like Job. Job waited and became the wealthiest and richest man ever 'cause he believed in God.

The hardest thing about being James Brown is I have to live. I don't have no down time.

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

I was stillborn. The midwives laid me aside, thought I was really gone. I laid there about an hour, and they picked me back up and tried again, 'cause my body was still warm. The Good Lord brought me back.

I got a wife who likes expensive things, so she takes all the cash.

You can't teach others if you are living the same way.

I just thank God for all of the blessings.

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

I think the best thing about being James Brown is looking at my little son. Hopefully I can make my son a role model to a lot of people.

You can take care of yourself, and God helps those who help themselves.

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

I'd like to cut down on the work a little bit.

I think what I came through is great, but my son can take it to another level, not having to fight racism. His mother's a Norwegian and I'm mixed up four or five times, so he can face the world.

Sometimes I feel like I'm a preacher as well, 'cause I can really get into an audience.

When God took it, he accepted it; when he brought it back, he accepted it. That's what's happening with me.

Michael Jackson has a very good heart. He was crying when he was giving me the award, 'cause his mind went back over the early days.

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

My expectations of other people, I double them on myself.

Thank God for the journey.

You only live once.

I started Michael years ago. I saw him in Gary, Indiana, and we'd have him on the talent shows. He kind of emulated me, and did the best he could.

I'm not going to be joining ZZ Top. You know they can't play my stuff. It's too complicated.

I'm kidding about having only a few dollars. I might have a few dollars more.

Our silence is deafening and deadly.

An album is a whole universe, and the recording studio is a three-dimensional kind of art space that I can fill with sound. Just as the album art and videos are ways of adding more dimensions to the words and music. I like to be involved in all of it because it's all of a piece.

Before a day was over Home comes the rover For mothers kiss sweeter this Than any other thing

But there isn't any second half of myself waiting to plug in and make me whole. It's there. I'm already whole.

There's so much fakeness in the fashion world, but Mum and Dad have always given us a good work ethic and were quite worried at first about whether I could make a living from acting. They've been together for 29 years and share the same values. I really do want to have that kind of marriage myself.

It's weird, because American films in the 1930s and '40s, particularly melodramas, were made for woman, from Bette Davis to Joan Crawford to Barbara Stanwyck to Katherine Hepburn, and for some reason we've taken a step backward in this sense.

From my standpoint, being an artist, I want to see what the new construction is between artist and audience.

If your writing collides with the conventional wisdom, there's going to be some kind of friction.

Doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.

Life is a marathon, not a sprint. It's about taking a bigger-picture approach.

All art stems from a place of alienation. Intimate and alone. Most people are oppressed by the opinion of others, but I was not that way. I was afraid of the repercussions of not doing what I was told to do, what I was called to do by a creator.

I think once you love somebody, you love somebody; that's just how it is.

Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.

Love is never wrong.

Forget the conspiracy theories! God gave us the right to vote, and He gave the United States, and all of its citizens, freedom through democracy.

I paint. I love the visual arts.