Mike Tyson Quotes

“Most writers, in my opinion, are dysfunctional derelicts.”

“I'm in trouble because I'm normal and slightly arrogant. A lot of people don't like themselves and I happen to be totally in love with myself.”

“I'm a bad guy. But if I was a good guy, nobody would want to pay to see me fight.”

“If he's not dead, it doesn't count.”

“Everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth.”

“I'm not Mother Teresa, but I'm not Charles Manson, either.”

“Even though I heard him say he doesn't believe, cuz' that's why from watching Ali gave me the great deal of confidence and deep-down inner belief to believe there's no man fighting that could beat me.”

“There's no future in our past. Just experience. We want to return to it, but we don't want to close the door on it either.”

“There's nothing wrong with making mistakes, just don't make the same ones. We don't want to duplicate them.”

“Emotion is more than just anger. When I am performing, I need emotion, but I need control, too. Emotion drives the best performance and is necessary, but it must be controlled. I believe Fedor [Emelianenko] does that. I do too. We may look different in how we do it, but we both do it.”

“Cus was my father but he was more than a father. You can have a father and what does it mean?—it doesn't really mean anything. Cus was my backbone . . . . He did everything for my best interest . . . . We'd spend all our time together, talk about things that, later on, would come back to me. Like about character, and courage. Like the hero and the coward: that the hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent, while the coward runs. It's the same thing, fear, but it's what you do with it that matters.”

“Without struggle, there is no progress. There has to be struggle in your life. You have to grow in experience to control your ego. Cause, you know, an ego can be crushed, it can be killed, it can be smashed, but it comes back. It never dies. That's the thing about the ego: it never dies.”

“If Mike Tyson is in your courtroom and you don't send him to jail, it's an injustice. Everyone knows he's a bad guy. So if he is in your courtroom, he should go to jail.”

“I just want to do what I do best, and that's fight. I love it.”

“Whatever you want, especially when you’re striving to be the best in the world at something, there’ll always be disappointments, and you can’t be emotionally tied to them, cos’ they’ll break your spirit.”

“I don't want to be remembered. As long as my kids remember me, I'd rather be forgotten by everybody else.”

“God, it would be good to be a fake somebody rather than a real nobody.”

“Nietzsche's my favorite. He's just insane.”

“What was most important was the knowledge [aspect] of the fight. I learned this early on and just told myself to "upgrade my mind." That's just what I wanted to do my whole life.”

“You can't be everybody's friend, you can't save the world, I learned this word: self-preservation. Once you do that, you can be friends with people, but how would you be a friend to anybody if you're not a friend to yourself.”

“We're all going to be tested. The dark energy is going to knock on all of our doors.”

“If you did everything your mind told you to do, you do some really strange stuff. You'll probably be in jail, you'll be in trouble. But, it's all about control. We all have to control our feelings. That's the thing that separates us from animals.”

“Nothing is more humbling than getting your ass kicked.”

“Every win, regardless a good or bad one, gives you more confidence.”

“If I was fighting myself, I always say that I would kill Mike Tyson but then again I don't know how hard a punch Mike Tyson can take and I don't know how hard Mike Tyson's punch is. I don't know. For me looking at me, I think I can beat me.”