Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali: It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.

Ali: It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.

Muhammad Ali: If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.

Muhammad Ali: I am tired of talking.

Muhammad Ali: I hated every minute of training, but I said, "Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion."

Muhammad Ali: Cassius Clay is a slave name. I didn't choose it, and I didn't want it. I am Muhammad Ali, a free name — it means beloved of God — and I insist people use it when speaking to me and of me.

Muhammad Ali: God gave me this illness to remind me that I'm not number One; he is.

Muhammad Ali: Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.

Muhammad Ali: If you even dreamed of beating me, you'd better wake up and apologize.

Muhammad Ali: To be a great champion you must believe you are the best. If you're not, pretend you are.

Muhammad Ali: Boxing is a lot of white men watching two black men beat each other up.

Muhammad Ali: Got nothing against no Viet Cong. No Vietnamese ever called me a nigger.

Muhammad Ali: 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.

Muhammad Ali: Ain't no reason for me to kill nobody in the ring, unless they deserve it.

Muhammad Ali: Frazier is so ugly that he should donate his face to the US Bureau of Wild Life.

Muhammad Ali: Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I'm not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn't have to draft me, I'd join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I'll go to jail, so what? We've been in jail for 400 years.

Muhammad Ali (Prior to a boxing match with Floyd Patterson): I'll beat him so bad he'll need a shoehorn to put his hat on.

Muhammad Ali: Wisdom is knowing when you can't be wise.

Muhammad Ali: At home I am a nice guy - but I don't want the world to know. Humble people, I've found, don't get very far.

Muhammad Ali: I am the astronaut of boxing. Joe Louis and Dempsey were just jet pilots. I'm in a world of my own.

Muhammad Ali: I won a gold medal representing the USA at the Olympic games in 1960, but when I came home I still got treated like a nigger. There were restaurants I couldn't get served in. Some people kept calling me 'boy'.

Muhammad Ali: I never said I was the smartest, I said I was the greatest.

Muhammad Ali: Champions aren't made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them - a desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have the skill, and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill.

Muhammad Ali: He's too ugly to be the champ!

Muhammad Ali: The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.

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