I don't mind people want to think Muhammad is the greatest fighter around. Everybody wants to make him great because of his mouth, that he was the best. He was good, but that doesn't make him great. I proved that.
I couldn't go to school with whites. Now there are schools that educate everyone.
This ultimate fighting stuff is something I don't agree with. Once a man is down, you have to let him have a chance to prove how good he is.
Work is the only meanin' I've ever known.
I don't want to be no more than what I am.
Fightin' George Foreman is like being in the street with an eighteen-wheeler comin' at you.
Had my own car at twelve years old. Left school in the tenth grade. Married when I was sixteen. Ain't hard to figure out; I was a man at a very young age.
Twenty years I've been fighting Ali, and I still want to take him apart piece by piece and send him back to Jesus.
When you work for me, you don't say good things about Ali.
Joe Frazier's life didn't start with Ali. I was a Golden Gloves champ. Gold medal in Tokyo '64. Heavyweight champion of the world long before I fought Ali in the Garden.
It was all about the ring. That's where you got your brains shook and the money took.
I hated Ali. God might not like me talking that way, but it's in my heart.
Ali would not be Ali unless I had come along. Him and me had three fights.
My left eye went when I was young. I was working the speed bag, and some steel went in the eye and scratched it to pieces. I was kinda blind in that eye.
Ali always said I would be nothing without him. But what would he have been without me?
When I was a boy, I used to pull a big cross saw with my dad. He'd use his right hand, so I'd have to use my left.
There are places on a man's head that are as hard as a rock. Your head's actually stronger than your body. And you don't have too many instruments up there workin'.
I had my Olympic gold medal cut up into eleven pieces. Gave all eleven of my kids a piece. It'll come together again when they put me down.
This is just another man, another fight, another payday.
When I go out there, I have no pity on my brother. I'm out there to win.
The boxing game has been good, so we need to give back. We have to teach young men how to be men.
I was never, ever once angry in the ring.
Trust me. Sometimes God comes down and puts his hand on you if you're too big in your thoughts.
I wasn't a big guy. People thought the big guys would eat me up. But it was the other way around. I loved to fight bigger guys.
I grew up in Beaufort, South Carolina, in a six-room farmhouse with a couple of leaning posts to keep it from fallin'. I came up in a time when men were men.
I want to hit him, step away and watch him hurt. I want his heart.
Life doesn't run away from nobody. Life runs at people.
Preaching don't mean you are a true man. You got to go out and do.
Ali even told me in the ring, 'You can't beat me - I'm your Lord.' I just told him, 'Lord, you're in the wrong place tonight.'
Boxing is the only sport you can get your brain shook, your money took and your name in the undertaker book.
My mom allowed me to take an old burlap bag and fill it with moss, corn stalks and rocks, then hang it from a tree and spend an hour a day punching my heavy bag.
Since I was a boy of five or six, I had it in my mind I would be a world boxing champion.
The way I fight, it's not me beatin' the man. I make the man whip himself.
I've achieved 'the American dream.' I feel it's my duty to help others achieve their vision, too - especially the youth.
I don't think a man has to go around shouting and play-acting to prove he is something. And a real man don't go around putting other guys down, trampling their feelings in the dirt, making out they're nothing.
I know my destiny. I was born into animosity, bigotry and hatred. We had water for white folks, and water for coloured folks. White lines, black lines. I came from Beaufort in South Carolina, and it was tougher than Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.
There are places on a man's head that are as hard as a rock. Your head's actually stronger than your body. And you don't have too many instruments up there workin'. But you got a lot of tools workin' in that body: the liver, the kidneys, the heart, the lungs. You soften that up and see what happens. I lived by the body shot.
I went to see President Nixon at the White House. It wasn't difficult to get a meeting because I was heavyweight champion of the world. So I came to Washington and walked around the garden with Nixon, his wife and daughter. I said: I want you to give Ali his licence back. I want to beat him up for you.
My family's support and the negative environment of the day toward blacks in South Carolina became the forces that led me out of the South - first to New York, then to Philadelphia, where I found opportunity in the form of a PAL gym and my trainer, Yank Durham.
