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 had to prove you could be a new kind of black man. I had to show the world.

A black, a Puerto Rican and a Mexican are in a car. Who's driving? The police.

Champions aren't made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them-a desire, a dream, a vision.

Rest but never quit. Even the sun has a sinking spell each evening. But it always rises the next morning. At sunrise, every soul is born again.

As soon as I heard the truth that Elijah Muhammad teaches us in America, it made me accept it.

The word had spread and people were piling around us. But then very suddenly, Sonny Liston froze me with that look of his. He said real quiet, 'Let's go on over here.' And he led the way to a table and the people hung back. I ain't going to lie. This was the only time since I have known Sonny Liston that he really scared me.