Top 40 Charles Bradley Quotes

I always try to get in the back of the audience because people really want to get close to me, and I want to get close to them.

Everybody tell me everywhere I go that I’m the closest thing to James Brown they ever seen.

My faith in God is totally… there’s nothing on this planet that can change my faith and love for God. Because I believe that’s who kept me strong, who kept me going through all the darkness and brought me through the darkness into the light.

I just have to open up when I’m on stage because that’s what I did in my life. I want people to know what I’ve been through, and the love and the honesty that I have kept inside me. I just open my heart and let my heart go free.

I always loved James Brown, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke.

I was learning ‘Changes’ at the time that my mom was sick and she was leaving me. And those last verses in that song, they really struck my soul, totally.

My biggest struggle is time and trying to create the quality of music that I want.

I did a CD way back in 1989, but I never got it off the ground.

Back in the day, I was afraid to speak out. When I get music behind me, it feels like I can soothe the hurt and put it in vocals and say it to the room the way I feel it.

With all the hurts they’ve been through, they find a loving way and a way to put their mind on something greater. That’s what makes a good artist, a good singer: because you can hear the hurt in their voice, and you can hear the love in their voice.

James Brown came from that hard, rough life that I came from. He took the blues and added rhythm to it. And he always had the most funkiest band; I liked the way he took his words and mixed it in with the band.

With James Brown, I just learn the lyrics and then get out there and get funky with it and let my spirit free. But doing Charles Bradley, it’s a lot of true, intimate words coming out of me that show me the picture inside myself.

If you’re gonna sing, sing from your heart, and the world will hear you.

Give your love and never change. Be willing to die for the love you carry inside.

If we don’t change this world and look inside our differences inside of us, we gonna bring this world back to a hard point.

I never knew about racial segregation until Martin Luther King.

Honestly, I’ve been excited for music ever since I was 16 years old. I’ll always love the music.

I’m so grateful there’s people that believe in me and want to hear more about me.

I don’t go on nobody’s stage before I give praise to God.

I’ve always been a person who wanted to withdraw from the world, because the changes I’ve been through, I just don’t want to go through anymore.

All I want to do is get me a piece of land someplace where I can say, ‘This is home,’ and I got nobody bothering me.

When I went to Gabriel Roth’s studio, I showed him I was good with my hands and started working as a handyman in his studio. I asked him for a chance, and he gave me a song to sing with Sharon Jones.

I just love dancing. When the music is really hitting my soul, then I really want to get into it.

If you want to give a show, make it real, and people will listen to you more carefully.

James Brown really taught me a lot – his lyrics and his performance and whatever he does when he’s onstage. I’ll always call him a legend, and I’ll always respect what he did.

I was 14, and I left on my own. Living in a subway train, and police used to come in with a nightstick and say, ‘You can’t sleep here.’ I’d get up and go across the street, get on another train, and go back the other way.

What I hope is if you turn on the news tonight, I want to find a way to stop all this corruption I see.

I think God gave me an inner dictionary. If you play the right music that my heart loves, lyrics just come right to me.

I’m trying to find a home that I can come home to, and there’s no stress or pressure to be scared to be in your own house.

My grandmother always told me that regardless of what the world gives you, stay humble. Stay strong in your beliefs, and be honest. And when you’re wrong, be a man and say you’re wrong. And be strong when you’re right.

I’m 62 years old, but I didn’t give up on my dreams. I just feel that God heard my cry, and he put the right people in front of me.

When I got out of Job Corps, I was an empty shell. I didn’t know what to do with myself.

Sometimes I have to run and hide. What I do at home sometimes is, I listen to a CD of the roughness of the ocean. I turn every light off, and I turn the stereo on, and I just go in my mind, cry, talk to God, tell him, ‘I’m your child, too.’ And I stay in my little solitude until I can get the strength to go outdoors.

I like to see the joy in people’s’ faces. I like to see when they actually question that I’m not afraid to answer and give them my respect and honesty with what I have to say to them.

I was determined not to sit around and watch my life deteriorate. I kept reaching out in hope and honesty that someone would find me. I never gave up hope. I fell flat on my face and got up again.

I go out of my way to acknowledge the public and let them know that I’m not always on stage. Offstage, I care. I live their life.

Just know that all the pain that I’ve been through, it made me strong.

America has been a very cold place to me, and it was good once in a while. I meet good people. Sometimes I meet bad people. But there are some things that I still haven’t forgotten today that hurt that bad.

I’m trying to stay focused – trying to open up again – and the music really did a lot of greatness for me and meeting a lot of people that really had concern and compassion for me.

I want to sit in my own sorrow, cry it out, talk to God, and say, ‘Give me strength, wisdom.’