I cannot fight everyone at once. I have to take one at a time.

There were different heroes with different images. There was Mike Tyson, the animal, there was Evander Holyfield, the devout, the priest. And there was me, the thinker, the intellectual boxer. So there was something for every fan, if you like. The public could always identify with one of us.

It's not rage that drives me, it's competition.

How can you trust a man who can talk for 5 minutes and you cant understand a sentence of it!

Sometimes success needs interruption to regain focus and shake off complacency.

The danger of a closed mind is that it can also leave good things like love, compassion and reason on its outside.

Patience is a part of boxing. After I had missed out on the Olympic gold medal in 1984, a lot of people tried to talk me into turning professional quickly to make money. They told me that the next Olympics in Seoul would be boycotted again, that I was wasting my life, blah blah. But I still had unfinished business. I wanted the gold medal, and I got it in ‘88. Only then was I ready to turn professional.