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

Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.

Volleyball, I could be pretty good. After a few practices I could be that striker, or whatever they call it.

In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it’s more dangerous to lose than to win.

I’ve taken countless shots in my life, so you know the ones when you’re in rhythm, with a perfect release, and it’s on track, that it’s going in.

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.

I don’t know who I would have been if I never watched MotoGP.

A lifetime contract for a coach means if you’re ahead in the third quarter and moving the ball, they can’t fire you.

There are no pleasures in a fight but some of my fights have been a pleasure to win.

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.

It obviously bothers people when Real Madrid win. It makes them jealous. There isn’t a level playing field.

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

I love money because I’ve earned it. I won sixty G’s with my first knockout – and the week before, I was collecting social welfare.

All the top players in the world play 45-50-60 games. You need that many games, even the strikers need that many games.

I aspire my country eventually has a league where all players play 50 games.

I don’t know about the 2026 World Cup. But I would love to see Anirudh Thapa sending a cross to Jhingan and I would love to watch it from the stands.

How you played in yesterday’s game is all that counts.

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.

Everybody asks if putting is like shooting free throws. It has a very similar kind of mindset. And it’s just you, the ball, and the target.

I am pretty chill before games. Have a go-to routine that keeps me busy until we are ready to take the court so I’m not just sitting around anxious for the game.

I want to elongate my cricketing career as a consistent player. I have personal goals I would like to achieve someday.

I am fortunate to have played 15 years for my country.

I look at athletes in all sports and try to picture what kind of football player they’d be, what position they’d play and so on.

I hit a grand slam off Ron Herbel and when his manager Herman Franks came out to get him, he was bringing Herbel’s suitcase.

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.

If you watch me during the game, I celebrate when we press the ball and it goes out.

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.‘

At the end of the day, we started playing football because we loved it.

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

I’m a football fan, a sports fan, a fan of competition.

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

You know, I’m just 6’9 and 260. And just so happen to be very good at playing the game of basketball.“

If you want to have a life that is worth living, a life that expresses your deepest feelings and emotions and cares and dreams, you have to fight for it.

We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

The press is still investing itself, it seems to me, in a sort of cynicism. It comes out better for them if they can predict hard times, bogging down, sniping, attrition.

Every season is a new challenge to me, and I always set out to improve in terms of games, goals, assists.

The joy of doing well as a batsman for your country is much more than that little joy of going for a party and enjoying music. It is a completely different high, and I get high by performances. That’s what I enjoy now.

Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature.

I had talked to a lot of people in Golden State’s front offices before the draft. They said they liked me, but they had a lot of guards, so I didn’t think that I would end up there.

When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.

It all went wrong with football, the thing I loved most of all, and from there, my life slowly fell apart.

I’m a golfer, and what are the two sports you can do till you drop? Golf and surfing. They’re great for you limber-wise, they’re great for you health-wise, and they put you in sweet locations.

A lot of the stuff I do in terms of PR, I learned it from Muhammad Ali.

Our lifetime may be the last that will be lived out in a technological society.

If you watch any good player, they’re using different parts of their body and working with instruments that respond to those movements. They’re moving in many dimensions at once.

Reading isn’t good for a ballplayer. Not good for his eyes. If my eyes went bad even a little bit I couldn’t hit home runs. So I gave up reading.

Baseball is a universe as large as life itself, and therefore all things in life, whether good or bad, whether tragic or comic, fall within its domain.

The best football is always about expression of emotion. Always.

The first two games for Churchill, I was so jittery that I didn’t know what to do. I was running more but didn’t know what to do. I’ve no bones accepting the fact that I didn’t know what was happening in the game.

In India, people are really glued to the Premier League and La Liga.

The more minutes you play and the more grind and physical play you endure through the course of a season, you have to re-charge and get your body right for the next season. Be in that weight room and conditioning and that kind of deal.

In Dortmund, they say the derby is more important than the championship. You can feel it around the game.

You want me to own a team and deal with these rich, spoiled stubborn athletes, and try to get them to perform? No thank you.

They’ll forget all the rubbish when I’ve gone, and they’ll remember the football. If only one person thinks I’m the best player in the world, that’s good enough for me.

I like playing. I wouldn’t be a good coach. I don’t have the patience to be a coach.

Fortunately for a quarterback, you can play for a long time because you don’t get hit very often.

Unless someone wants to look funny, I’ll not recommend anyone to copy my bowling action. But on a serious note, with the confidence that I have got from the amount of runs I have been scoring, when I’m thrown the ball to bowl, I am pretty sure of what I have to do. I may not be the most attractive to watch while bowling, but I can be effective.

I was a good football player, and I had a chance to play with some great players.

Bobby Knight told me this: ‚There is nothing that a good defense cannot beat a better offense.‘ In other words a good offense wins.

If Everton were playing down the bottom of my garden, I’d draw the curtains.

I still enjoy watching a batter successfully cross home plate, but nothing thrills me more than seeing the Holy Spirit at work in hearts as the Gospel is carried into stadiums, across the airwaves, and around the world.