"If everyone who had a gun just shot themselves, there wouldn't be a problem."

"In order to win you must be prepared to lose sometime. And leave one or two cards showing."

"I went back to Belfast and started a club, the Maritime. No one had thought about doing a blues club, so I was the first."

"Large audiences did not suit my low-key approach."

"I never bought the commercial thing, at any stage of the game."

"I learnt from Armstrong on the early recordings that you never sang a song the same way twice."

"I put out records to this day that are not necessarily in a sequence of anything. Some could be written a while back, some not. There is no set pattern."

"A lot of people who were writing when I came through originally as a singer-songwriter have disappeared."

"I deliberately try not to cater for the commercial market, so I can't see myself in competition, you know, with second or third generation rock stars."

"Now what is food for the inner man? Not prayer, but the Word of God; and here again, not the simple reading of the Word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water passes through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering it over and applying it to our hearts."

"A brother with small earnings may ask,''Should I also give? My earning are already so small that my family can barely make ends meet.'' My reply is, ''Have you ever considered that the very reason your earnings remain so small may be because you spend everything on yourself? If God gave you more, you would only use it to increase your own comfort instead of looking to see who is sick or who has no work at all that you might help them."

"It often astonishes me that I did not see the importance of meditation upon Scripture earlier in my Christian life. As the outward man is not fit for work for any length of time unless he eats, so it is with the inner man. What is the food for the inner man? Not prayer, but the Word of God -not the simple reading of the Word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe. No, we must consider what we read, ponder over it, and apply it to our hearts."

"There was a day when I died; died to self, my opinions, preferences, tastes and will; died to the world, its approval or censure; died to the approval or blame even of my brethren or friends; and since then I have studied only to show myself approved unto God."

"When the day of recompense comes, our only regret will be that we have done so little for Him, not that we have done too much."

"We'd always said boxers shouldn't lift weights. Now I realize some champion boxer started that rumor. I noticed if I did weights a couple of times a week, I would be able to hit that jab a lot longer. After sparring, everybody's gone, and I sneak into the weight room. Spend 40 minutes in there lifting weights."

"I wanted to be the best street fighter in Houston, Texas. And I thought if I got a trophy or two, I'd go back home, and everyone would be afraid of me. I had one fight in '67, the first one. In '68 of October, I was an Olympic gold-medalist, a dream come true, with a total of 25 boxing matches."

"I'm on the record for five losses or something like that, but the one guy who really whipped me was Muhammad Ali. And it taught me one big lesson. That no matter how big and strong you are, you're going to have to use your mind. You must think things out."

"All of a sudden, one day, you're this boxer that everybody like, or you're this guy that people pass on the highway and wave at. The next day, you're this guy that everybody want to touch - be in touch with you. Then you think that this is the answer to all things."

"I feel that I had been rescued from the gutter by America. One day I was under the gutter, chased by police, thinking dogs were going to get me. I laid there listening to the dogs and the gutter. The next day, there I am standing on the Olympic platform, and you hear the anthem. I was proud."

"If you learn to sell, it's worth more than a degree. It's worth more than the heavyweight championship of the world. It's even more important than having a million dollars in the bank. Learn to sell, and you'll never starve."

"I'm never without my dog. They would be in every corner of the house, and my wife will not allow me to have any more than that. But I have lots of dogs. I love the dogs. I breed them. I always have a puppy coming. And I show dogs. I show German shepherds."

"Growing up poor, I didn't even have a lunch to take to school. Lunch was 26 cents, and we didn't even know what 26 cents looked like. I didn't love school because I wanted to disguise that I was poorer than everybody else."

"'Iron' Mike Tyson is the last boxer who was truly embraced by the media. They followed him around. You didn't know what he was going to do next: bite you, cut you, fight you. When you think about it, that defines him - it was an exciting adventure."

"As a matter of fact, there was a period of time, especially in my first career, when that's the only one who would work out with me: my dogs. As you get better and better working out, there's no one who can keep up with you running."