James Brown Quotes

Take those kids and raise them up, teach them how to drink out of a righteous cup.

You're like a dull knife, it just ain't cutting.

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

Music has to breathe and sweat. You have to play it live.

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

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

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

Get on up, stay on the scene, get on up, like a sex machine.

I've outdone anyone you can name - Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Strauss. Irving Berlin, he wrote 1,001 tunes. I wrote 5,500.

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.

I'm twice as old, but I feel good.

I'm a ghetto man who made good. I never forgot where I came from and who put me on top - God and Jack The Rapper.

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

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

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.

I'm the most sampled and stolen. What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine, too... I got a song about that... But I'm never gonna release it. Don't want a war with the rappers. If it wasn't good, they wouldn't steal it.

If you don't get it the first time, back up and try it again.

Papa didn't cuss, he didn't raise a whole lot of fuss. But when we did wrong, Papa beat the hell out of us.

I've been knocked down a lot of times.

Tell the politicians and the hustlers: live and let live.

As I always said, if people wanted to know who James Brown is, all they have to do is listen to my music.

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

Music, it requires more than brawn. It requires a lot of heart. You gotta put love in there.

It doesn't matter how you travel it, it's the same road. It doesn't get any easier when you get bigger, it gets harder. And it will kill you if you let it.

I used to play one job and have 125 pair of shoes on the floor. What was I doing? I couldn't wear but one pair.