You can be free. You can be black. Look at me! I'm the Heavyweight Champion! Can't nobody stop me.

People don't realise what they had till it's gone. Like President Kennedy - nobody like him. Like The Beatles, there will never be anything like them. Like my man, Elvis Presley - I was the Elvis of boxing.

I can't believe some of the things I did.Can't believe it. Sayin' I was the greatest and the beautifulist and I was gonna whup this guy and that guy, sayin' I'm pretty, I can't be beat.

Whatever the challenge was, however unattainable the goal may have seemed, I never let anyone talk me out of believing in myself.

My trainer don't tell me nothing between rounds. I don't allow him to. I fight the fight. All I want to know is did I win the round. It's too late for advice.

Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?

I shook up the world.