“Floyd Paterson? Boy, he's the complete opposite to me. He no way like me. They go down in history for just being athletes. I'm getting more praise and credit for doing what I'm doing now on this show than coming here and beating five of your English champions.”

“Whether it's boxing, basketball, or badminton, one must be ready to succeed before entering the arena...long before the lights come up.”

“Superman don't need no seat belt.”

“I had something to do, which most kids really need. Something they can look forward to - a goal, a purpose to work towards. Something to achieve. Keeps them out of trouble.”

“If I could meet anybody? The prophet Muhammad.”

“You speak an infinite deal of nothing.”

“They have a plentiful lack of wit.”

“Thou sodden-witted lord! thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows.”

“MY greatest regret in life is that I never became the heavyweight boxing champion ofthe world.”

“I did not enjoy the violence of boxing so much as the science of it. I was intrigued by how one moved one's body to protect oneself, how one used a strategy both to attack and retreat, how one paced oneself over a match.”

“I figure I'll be champ for about ten years and then I'll let my brother take over - like the Kennedys down in Washington.”

“The soul of this man is his clothes.”

“We will have rings and things and fine array”

“Nothing comes amiss, so money comes withal.”

“It now appears that the negro race is, more than any other, susceptible of rapid civilization. The emancipation is observed, in the islands, to have wrought for the negro a benefit as sudden as when a thermometer is brought out of the shade into the sun. It has given him eyes and ears.”

“The civility of no race can be perfect whilst another race is degraded.”

“Black men built the railroads, not blue eyes.”

“And fearless minds climb soonest unto crowns.”

“Some falls the means are happier to rise.”

“Many strokes, though with a little axe, hew down and fell the hardest-timber'd oak.”

“What is honour? a word. What is in that word honour? what is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? he that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no. Doth he hear it? no.”

“Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely.”

“I could better eat with one who did not respect the truth or the laws, than with a sloven and unpresentable person. Moral qualities rule the world, but at shorter distances, the senses are despotic.”