You can't keep your mind on fighting when you're thinking about a woman. You can't keep your concentration. You feel like sleeping all the time.

I just felt the power and the meanness of the man I was messing with.

I always liked to chase the girls. Parkinson's stops all that. Now I might have a chance to go to heaven.

True giving happens when we give from our heart.

Inside of a ring or out, ain't nothing wrong with going down. It's staying down that's wrong.

I said to myself, 'the champion of the whole world can whoop every man in Russia, every man in America, every man in China, every man in Japan, every man in Europe - every man in the whole world'.It sounds big, didn't it? So I kept working until I did it.

I came back to Louisville after the Olympics with my shiny gold medal. Went into a luncheonette where black folks couldn't eat. Thought I'd put them on the spot. I sat down and asked for a meal. The Olympic champion wearing his gold medal. They said, "We don't serve niggers here." I said, "That's okay, I don't eat 'em." But they put me out in the street. So I went down to the river, the Ohio River, and threw my gold medal in it.