Boxing is limited fighting with a specific rule set. Fighting is true, where you can do anything.

I used to tease Joe Louis by reminding him that I was the greatest of all time. But Joe Louis was the greatest heavyweight fighter ever.

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

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

In fact men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth – often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.

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

People say that I’m a boxer. I actually started with kick boxing, and then I moved onto boxing, and then I moved onto grappling.

I had a good time boxing. I enjoyed it – and I may come back.

I’m committed to the fight game.

I’m going to change the way martial arts is viewed. I’m going to change the game. I’m going to change the way people approach fighting.

Wherever the enemy wants to fight, we will follow him to the ends of the Earth. We’ll adapt, we’ll train, we’ll advise, we’ll mentor, and we’ll fight, and we’ll fight well.

To kids, I’ve always been more than just some big tough black guy. I train to be tough – I box and do karate – but underneath all that toughness is a tender man.

This guy Clubber Lang, I’ve been him all my life. He’s mean and hungry just like me.

A good boxing competition gives one the sight of fine men in their prime, trained to the ounce, showing the highest skill, pluck and endurance in carrying out their attack and defence under strict rules of fair play and good temper.

I done wrestled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale; handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail; only last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalised a brick; I’m so mean I make medicine sick.

I’m more of a realist when it comes to life, and I’d much rather my mother be in a spiritual place in Heaven than in a bed, sick, fighting for her life.

I was a huge Mike Tyson fan growing up; his fights were always on in my house.

We are like boxers, one never knows how much longer one has.

If they let people go fight jiu-jitsu tournaments, they can’t stop me going to fight a boxing fight.

Joe Frazier got hit more than me – and he doesn’t have Parkinson’s.

Sonny Liston is nothing. The man can’t talk. The man can’t fight. The man needs talking lessons. The man needs boxing lessons. And since he’s gonna fight me, he needs falling lessons.

My goal is to be number one in MMA.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

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

You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.

My trainer don’t tell me nothing between rounds. I don’t allow him to. I fight the fight. All I want to know is did I win the round. It’s too late for advice.

I’ll beat him so bad he’ll need a shoehorn to put his hat on.

Ali’s got a left, Ali’s got a right – when he knocks you down, you’ll sleep for the night; and when you lie on the floor and the ref counts to ten, hope and pray that you never meet me again.

I knew I’d be in the UFC since I started my career.

I’m tired of fighting. I’ve always known that I can’t be an action star all my life.

No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.

I never got into training to be an All-Ireland boxing champ or to win a belt. At the start, I just got into it to learn how to defend myself when I got into situations.

To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself.

When I won the Golden Gloves in 1960, that made me realize I had a chance. And when I won at the Olympics, that sealed it: I was the champ.

If I said I would knock out Sonny Liston in 1 minute and 49 seconds of the first round, that would hurt the gate.

I always bring out the best in men I fight, but Joe Frazier, I’ll tell the world right now, brings out the best in me. I’m gonna tell ya, that’s one helluva man, and God bless him.

I calculate that I took 20,000 punches, but I earned millions and kept a lot of it. I may talk slow, but my mind is OK.

I have a deep, deep belief that if I tell you I’m going to crack you with a clean shot to the chin inside one minute of the first round and you will be unconscious, well, then that’s what will happen.

‚Rocky‘ and ‚Rocky III‘ were the best.

Never put your money against Cassius Clay, for you will never have a lucky day.

I have always fought for concrete facts, for justice.

People don’t realize what they had till it’s gone. Like President Kennedy, there was no one like him, the Beatles, and my man Elvis Presley. I was the Elvis of boxing.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

The Cold War isn’t thawing; it is burning with a deadly heat. Communism isn’t sleeping; it is, as always, plotting, scheming, working, fighting.

When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, the U.N. vetoed several resolutions right away, calling for an end to the fighting and so on, and that was a hideous invasion.

The wild Indian power of escaping observation, even where there is little or no cover to hide in, was probably slowly acquired in hard hunting and fighting lessons while trying to approach game, take enemies by surprise, or get safely away when compelled to retreat.

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

I’m in the game of spinning plates. I’m spinning a boxing plate. I’m spinning a Tae Kwon Do plate. I’m spinning a Jujitsu plate. I’m spinning a freestyle wrestling plate. I’m spinning a karate plate. If I was to put all them down and have one boxing plate spinning, it would be like a load off my shoulders.

All the screen cowboys behaved like real gentlemen. They didn’t drink, they didn’t smoke. When they knocked the bad guy down, they always stood with their fists up, waiting for the heavy to get back on his feet. I decided I was going to drag the bad guy to his feet and keep hitting him.

Battle is an orgy of disorder.

I’m already the face of the UFC, plus the face of boxing, WWE, and Hollywood.

Cage Warriors is a brilliant organisation. They’re doing great things for European MMA, and they’re giving the platform for guys like me who came through. They’re vital. I’m forever grateful for the opportunities I got.

I don’t feel bitterness, I don’t feel anger towards anybody. Fighting is never emotional to me.

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

If you learn a martial art, you learn to be dangerous, but simultaneously, you learn to control it.

I have just returned from visiting the Marines at the front, and there is not a finer fighting organization in the world!

There is nothing I love as much as a good fight.

No boxer in the history of boxing has had Parkinson’s. There’s no injury in my brain that suggests that the illness came from boxing.

I have been so great in boxing they had to create an image like Rocky, a white image on the screen, to counteract my image in the ring. America has to have its white images, no matter where it gets them. Jesus, Wonder Woman, Tarzan and Rocky.

I have the greatest job in the world. I get paid loads of cash for beating the crap out of people. And I’m very good at it.

You can’t keep your mind on fighting when you’re thinking about a woman. You can’t keep your concentration. You feel like sleeping all the time.