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• A colored is a very frightened-to-death Afro-American. A Negro is one that makes it in the system, and he wants to be white. A nigger, he's loud and boisterous, wants to be seen. Nobody likes a nigger. A black man has pride. He wants to build, he wants to make his race mean something. Wants to have a culture and art forms. And he's not prejudiced. I am a black American man. Now you go ahead and print it.
  • On personal identity (1982) — as quoted in "Funk's founding father," Rolling Stone Magazine, 2007-01-10

• 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.
  • "Being James Brown," Rolling Stone Magazine, 2006-06-12

• I would warn against anyone marrying a person with more than a ten-year age difference. It almost never works. It is difficult to find things to talk about, to use similar reference points, and to operate at the same speed of life. Another problem is that both sides usually don't want the same things at the same time.
  • Brown, J. & Eliot, M. (2005). I Feel Good: A Memoir of a Life of Soul , pp. 247-248. New American Library: New York. ISBN 0-45121-393-9

• This is an issue couples have to be straight on and agree on before they walk down that aisle; otherwise there is no way their marriage will survive.
  • On having children — as quoted in Brown, J. & Eliot, M. (2005). I Feel Good: A Memoir of a Life of Soul, p. 248. New American Library: New York. ISBN 0-45121-393-9

• To make it in life, you and your wife need to be in the same business. That has been my problem all along. My wives didn't know what I was doing. I would come back home from the road to a stranger. That's no good.
  • Brown, J. & Tucker, B. (2003). James Brown: The Godfather of Soul, p. 266. Thunder's Mouth Press: New York. ISBN 1-56025-388-6

• Hair is the first thing. And teeth the second. Hair and teeth. A man got those two things he's got it all.
  • Brown, J. & Tucker, B.B. (1986). James Brown: The Godfather of Soul. Macmillan: New York. ISBN 0-02517-430-4

• 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."
  • Brown, J. & Tucker, B.B. (1986). James Brown: The Godfather of Soul. Macmillan: New York. ISBN 0-02517-430-4

• 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.
  • Brown, J. & Tucker, B.B. (1986). James Brown: The Godfather of Soul. Macmillan: New York. ISBN 0-02517-430-4

• 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.
  • Brown, J. & Tucker, B.B. (1986). James Brown: The Godfather of Soul. Macmillan: New York. ISBN 0-02517-430-4

• Don't terrorize. Organize. Don't burn. Give kids a chance to learn ... The real answer to race problems in this country is education. Not burning and killing. Be ready. Be qualified. Own something. Be somebody. That's Black Power.
  • Statement on national TV during the 1968 riots in Washington, DC after the Martin Luther King assassination

• I'm going away tonight.
  • Last words as quoted by James Brown to Charles Bobbit, his longtime personal manager, just minutes before death on December 25 2006