The first time I crawled into the octagon, I just felt like an animal, you know? Like a creature, like I wasn't quite human.

I feel like a lot of my fans hold high expectations of me when it comes to inside the Octagon - not so much outside of the Octagon - but I feel like most of my performances are pretty dominant, so I don't feel like I have the luxury to not perform in an extremely impressive fashion.

I'm a champion, and I believe that if you're a champion, you can't be afraid to go out there and test yourself against the greatest challenges.

Fighting was something inside of me that I didn't realize was there.

Growing up, I was poor. In college, I was poor. I never had anything.

I don't enjoy hitting people; I enjoy outsmarting them.

To see my little brother Chandler outdoing me, it's great; I want to be able to cross-market and feed off his star power.

I genuinely wanted to be an inspiration to other people and inspire people and be a role model.

Conor McGregor has been a tremendous inspiration to me.

I want to take this time to thank Daniel Cormier for being my biggest rival and motivator. He has absolutely no reason to hang his head. He has been a model champion, a model husband, a model father, a teammate, a leader, and I aspire to be a lot more like that man, because he's an amazing human being.

You've got to give your past attention, but you've got to forgive yourself, acknowledge what you did wrong, and be a man, taking responsibility. You can't not fly anymore because of the things you've been through. You've got to believe in a brighter future, that better version of yourself.

I wouldn't argue that Anderson Silva is the best pound-for-pound fighter in MMA.

I was never popular. I always kind of wanted to be accepted with the rich kids, with the cool kids, and I never had that.

Having that Christian base keeps me focused on what I have to do. It keeps me out of the clubs and in the gym.

Even though I have bad qualities in my personal life, as an athlete, I can turn it on.

Daniel Cormier has been a model champion. He will be a champion for the rest of his life.

One day when I was bored, I just went down to a powerlifting gym, Via Strength Systems in Albuquerque. I knew I needed to expend my energy somehow. I started working out with them four days a week. I became obsessed with lifting and being fit.

In a fight, you got to know that there's a strong chance you're going to get hurt. But at the same time, you know, most of the injuries you sustain in fighting are not career-ending injuries.

Being labeled as someone who would cheat hurts more than anything else I've ever been through in my career.

I think once you start to think that you're the man, and you know it all, and your style is unbeatable and stuff like that, that's when you get caught and clipped and get humbled really fast.

Fitness really changed my life.

I absolutely hate when people mention Rashad Evans.

When it comes to fighting and other fighters, I try to be respectful.

I grew up originally in Rochester. It was where I was born and a very tough neighbourhood with a lot of violence. I consider myself lucky. When I was aged 11, in 1998, Dad moved us to a suburban area from what was a ghetto area. It gave me a chance of survival.

I'll fight anywhere, man.

The moment I let fear slip in is the moment that the fights are gonna start getting closer and closer.

I just would hate to have to fight my own teammate. I would never want to.

For a long time, I consciously tried to be a good person for others. Not anymore. Caring about other people keeps me in line, but I've decided to just be myself.

I'll see trash talk and people telling me why they're favorite fighter is going to beat me. It motivates me for sure.

I will get out there and train harder than anyone, five times a day sometimes. You have to be a special person to do that - like, special forces, military maybe.

It's not my business what other people think of me.

I am an athlete in every sense of the word. Athlete, martial artist.

I put pressure on myself and feel pressure from my fans to not only win but to look great doing it.

I'm very aware of my image and the perception of me.

When you say, 'When you're wrong, you're wrong,' I would 100 percent agree. I've always handled my punishments head on.

Life is supposed to be about love and good times, and so I've forgiven myself after paying the consequences of my bad decisions, and I'm ready to move forward and allow my life to be a light to others that it's never over, even for a person like me, who has lost a tremendous amount of respect among my peers, my fans, my friends and family.

A champion without his belt is like a knight without his sword. I've got to have it.

When I fight someone who's not a good person, I want to beat him.

Call it weakness if you will, but even the toughest individuals need assistance getting back on track.

I'm here to fight; I'm not here to protect whether you think I'm a good person or not. I've given up on that.

I'll always cringe remembering those little embarrassing moments when I said something dumb on a conference call, when my inexperience poked through, when I should have been more solicitous of the judgment of those around me. They're a reminder that it's not mutually exclusive to be confident and humble, to be skeptical and eager to learn.

I am very glad that Paul Ryan left the government as a capitulating supplicant to Donald Trump while the government was shut down, while the debt hit record levels, right? Every single thing Paul Ryan claimed to care about.

If there is one way that I would sum up what the 2016 election was on cable news, it was world-class journalists interviewing morons.

We are drowning in partisan rhetoric that is just true enough not to be a lie; in industry-sponsored research; in social media's imitation of human connection; in legalese and corporate double-speak.

The First Amendment's protections have always put a great deal of responsibility in our hands: not only to respect the power of our own speech, but also to respect that same power in the hands of people we despise.

'The West Wing' was an incredible, inspiring show - and one of the reasons I wanted to be a speechwriter.

America needs a strong, rational, positive, practical conservative movement. It needs that bulwark against liberal delusion and hubris. It needs a voice that says we are imperfect, that life is complex, that government can create need even as it meets need, that you can't fix everything, and freedom is worth some danger and sorrow.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. That's what you have to do: you have to be confident in your potential and aware of your inexperience.

Kellyanne Conway is one of the most dishonest humans ever to grace the office she holds.

When in doubt, mock the powerful, not the powerless.