I'm no leader; I'm a little humble follower.

All of us are so mixed. My great-grandfather was white.

There are no pleasures in a fight but some of my fights have been a pleasure to win.

The only thing that matters is submitting to the will of God.

Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change.

I know I got it made while the masses of black people are catchin' hell, but as long as they ain't free, I ain't free.

Many times the reading of a book has made the future of a man.

Never read any book that is not a year old.

Books are the best type of the influence of the past… The theory of books is noble.

Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation -rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.

There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion.

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

Some books leave us free and some books make us free.

The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.

There never was a child so lovely, but his mother was glad to get him asleep.

My way of joking is to tell the truth. That's the funniest joke in the world.

If you even dream of beating me you'd better wake up and apologize.

I wish people would love everybody else the way they love me. It would be a better world.

I always bring out the best in men I fight, but Joe Frazier, I'll tell the world right now, brings out the best in me. I'm gonna tell ya, that's one helluva man, and God bless him

I never thought of losing, but now that it' s happened, the only thing is to do it right. That's my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.

I'm not the greatest; I'm the double greatest. Not only do I knock 'em out, I pick the round.

I should be a postage stamp, because that's the only way I'll ever get licked. I'm beautiful. I'm fast. I'm so mean I make medicine sick. I can't possibly be beat.

All black Americans have slave names. They have white names; names that the slave master has given to them.

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

I figured that if I said it enough, I would convince the world that I really was the greatest.

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 used to tease Joe Louis by reminding him that I was the greatest of all time. But Joe Louis was the greatest heavyweight fighter ever.

If they can make penicillin out of mouldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.

I'm so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room was dark.

Terrorists are not following Islam. Killing people and blowing up people and dropping bombs in places and all this is not the way to spread the word of Islam. So people realize now that all Muslims are not terrorists.

I'll beat him so bad he'll need a shoehorn to put his hat on.

Life is a gamble. You can get hurt, but people die in plane crashes, lose their arms and legs in car accidents; people die every day. Same with fighters: some die, some get hurt, some go on. You just don't let yourself believe it will happen to you.

Allah's the Arabic term for God. Stand up for God, fight for God, work for God and do the right thing, and go the right way, things will end up in your corner.

The fact is, I was never too bright in school. I ain't ashamed of it, though. I mean, how much do school principals make a month?

I didn't want to submit to the army and then, on the day of judgment, have God say to me, 'Why did you do that?' This life is a trial, and you realize that what you do is going to be written down for Judgment Day.

Respect the child. Wait and see the new product of Nature. Nature loves analogies, but not repetitions. Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity.

Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.

See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for.

The college, which should be a place of delightful labour, is made odious and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits.

Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.

The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men round to his opinion twenty years later.

Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

I have been so great in boxing they had to create an image like Rocky, a white image on the screen, to counteract my image in the ring. America has to have its white images, no matter where it gets them. Jesus, Wonder Woman, Tarzan and Rocky.

Ever since I first came here in 1963 to fight Henry Cooper, I have loved the people of England.

I would say things like 'I am the greatest! I'm pretty! If you talk jive, you'll drop in five! I float like a butterfly, sting like a bee! I'm pretty!' When white people heard me talking like this, some said, 'That black man talks too much. He's bragging.'

I wanted to use my fame and this face that everyone knows so well to help uplift and inspire people around the world.