I love boxing and it did a lot for me. But sometimes it made me think how savage human beings could be to each other. That wasn't the kind of boxer I wanted to be. My strategy was to be as scientific as I could when I fought. I didn't want to be seriously hurt, and I didn't want to do that to anybody else either.
Muhammad AliAll through my life, I have been tested. My will has been tested, my courage has been tested, my strength has been tested. Now my patience and endurance are being tested.
Muhammad AliEmmett Till and I were about the same age. A week after he was murdered... I stood on a corner with a gang of boys, looking at pictures of him in the black newspapers and magazines. In one, he was laughing and happy. In the other, his head was swollen and bashed in, his eyes bulging out of their sockets, and his mouth twisted and broken... I couldn't get Emmett Till out of my mind, until one evening I thought of a way to get back at white people for his death.
Muhammad AliYou can't take no Chinese man and give him no Puerto Rican woman and talking like they're in love and emotionally in love and physically.
Muhammad Ali