No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.

So is cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more it is spent, the more remains.

The world makes way for the man who knows where he is going.

Genius borrows nobly. When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies: “Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life”.

Life is like a ship. There's people dancing on a ship.There's a lot of money on the ship, but I cannot integrate on the ship or get equality on the ship.And I never could. I'm just in the galley working and I never could get up to see the captain of the ship.

When people are forced to interact to survive, their prejudices diminish.

Ever since I first came here in 1963 to fight Henry Cooper, I have loved the people of England.

I know I got it made while the masses of black people are catchin' hell, but as long as they ain't free, I ain't free.

I'm the most recognized and loved man that ever lived cuz there weren't no satellites when Jesus and Moses were around, so people far away in the villages didn't know about them.

I would say things like 'I am the greatest! I'm pretty! If you talk jive, you'll drop in five! I float like a butterfly, sting like a bee! I'm pretty!' When white people heard me talking like this, some said, 'That black man talks too much. He's bragging.'

Ever since I first came here in 1963 to fight Henry Cooper, I have loved the people of England.

Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men round to his opinion twenty years later.

Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.

The fact is, I was never too bright in school. I ain't ashamed of it, though. I mean, how much do school principals make a month?

Allah's the Arabic term for God. Stand up for God, fight for God, work for God and do the right thing, and go the right way, things will end up in your corner.

If they can make penicillin out of mouldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.

I should be a postage stamp, because that's the only way I'll ever get licked. I'm beautiful. I'm fast. I'm so mean I make medicine sick. I can't possibly be beat.

I'm not the greatest; I'm the double greatest. Not only do I knock 'em out, I pick the round.

I never thought of losing, but now that it' s happened, the only thing is to do it right. That's my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion.

I know I got it made while the masses of black people are catchin' hell, but as long as they ain't free, I ain't free.

You think the world was shocked when Nixon resigned? Wait till I whup George Foreman's behind.