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

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.

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.

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

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

You know, Nirvana used to start rehearsals with the three of us just jamming. For, like, a half an hour, just noise and freeform crap – and usually it was crap. But sometimes things would come from it, and some songs on Nevermind came from that, and ‚Heart Shaped Box‘ and stuff on ‚In Utero‘ just happened that way.

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

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

I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness; I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.

I’ve read a lot of books on the laws of attraction, and in my home, I have a big book on Muhammad Ali, which I’ve read because he is, like, a hero of mine, but other than that, no, I’m not a big reader.

I will fight in many weight divisions.

Wrestling was like stand-up comedy for me. Every night I had a live audience of 25,000 people to win over. My goal was never to be the loudest or the craziest. It was to be the most entertaining.

Because of my wrestling background, nothing a director can throw at me on a set can faze me.

Even as a child, Muhammad Ali got perverse pleasure out of being different. He liked the attention it got him, but most of all he just liked being himself: odd and independent.

Wrestling is intimate. You can reach out and touch the wrestlers.

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

No, there’s something about the sing-song cadence of children’s music that has its place in rock.

I used to bodyguard for Muhammad Ali, Leon Spinks, Sugar Ray Leonard. I used to bodyguard a lot of diamond merchants; I would travel with a suitcase full of diamonds and take them from point A to point B. My reputation grew because I was a professional. I did my job, and I was courteous – a no-nonsense guy.

Mickey Rourke’s character in ‚The Wrestler‘ – that was my dad, that was my uncles, that was so many members of my family. It was the only thing they knew. And then they would end up wrestling for a hundred bucks, go to autograph signings for two hundred bucks.

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

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.

They say marriages are made in Heaven. But so is thunder and lightning.

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.

WWE is a space where I thrived, and I loved, and I still do. I love connecting with an audience; that is the greatest thing about going back to WWE.

When I was a kid at four years old, that’s when I started amateur wrestling with my dad and family. And when that’s instilled in you, it never goes away.

I would probably have more in common with a whale than with a bourgeois married couple employed at worthy institutions that I would wipe from the face of the earth if it was given to me to do so.

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’d love it if everyone knew one Foo Fighters song.

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

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

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.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

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.

You are twice as likely to be struck by lightning as you around to be affected by a terrorist event in the United States.

Lightning is something which, again, we would rather avoid.

The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

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.

WWE asked me to be in the Hall of Fame, and I turned it down. You know why? They put Pete Rose in the wrestling Hall of Fame. This guy can’t even get into his own Hall of Fame.

You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.

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

In wrestling, there’s a shelf life, and some wrestlers don’t pay attention to the shelf life.

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

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.

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.

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.

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.

Life is the fire that burns and the sun that gives light. Life is the wind and the rain and the thunder in the sky. Life is matter and is earth, what is and what is not, and what beyond is in Eternity.

Electricity is really just organized lightning.

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 love the Sex Pistols. I’m a big Beach Boys fan and a huge Zeppelin and Queen fan.

Most of the time spent wrestling with technologies that don’t quite work yet is just not worth the effort for end users, however much fun it is for nerds like us.

I’d love to go into WWE and have a real knock and see what’s what.

Muhammad Ali is a legend, a hero of mine.

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

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.

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

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.

If I want to be called ‚The Rock,‘ I’ll be called ‚The Rock.‘ If I want to go back to wrestling, I’ll go back to wrestling.

That was always the difference between Muhammad Ali and the rest of us. He came, he saw, and if he didn’t entirely conquer – he came as close as anybody we are likely to see in the lifetime of this doomed generation.