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

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.

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

Americans love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle.

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

I will fight in many weight divisions.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

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

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.

Battle is an orgy of disorder.

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.

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

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.

People think hard sparring will get you sharp. And you do get sharp in the gym. But anytime I’ve trained that way, I’ve actually been a little bit flatter in the fight. And the knockout shot hasn’t come. It’s almost because my training has been too hard.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I’m just looking to learn, grow, stay focused, and become a better fighter and a better athlete.

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

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 have always fought for concrete facts, for justice.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

When I’m ready to fight, my opponent has a better chance of surviving a forest fire wearing gasoline drawers.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

My goal is to be number one in MMA.

I don’t fight in chase of an individual. I hear this sometimes where fighters work their whole careers to reach a matchup with a certain individual. I do not think in that way.

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

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

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.

I think I am the greatest fighter in any class. I know I can hold two, maybe even three belts.

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’ve seen George Foreman shadow boxing, and the shadow won.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

If you have to stand and fight, you train yourself so that you’re able to do it.