Quotes to inspire and reflect

Sonny Liston is nothing. The man can't talk. The man can't fight. The man needs talking lessons. The man needs boxing lessons. And since he's gonna fight me, he needs falling lessons.

At home I am a nice guy: but I don't want the world to know. Humble people, I've found, don't get very far.

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.

The third man in the ring makes boxing possible.

When you saw me in the boxing ring fighting, it wasn't just so I could beat my opponent. My fighting had a purpose. I had to be successful in order to get people to listen to the things I had to say.

Now you see me, now you don't. George thinks he will, but I know he won't!

It's hard to be humble, when you're as great as I am.

To be a great champion you must first believe you are the best. If you're not, pretend you are.

Don’t count the days, make the days count.

Journalist Harry Cosell was going to be a boxer when he was a kid, only they couldn’t find a mouthpiece big enough.

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

Baseball it is said is only a game. True and the Grand Canyon is only a hole in the ground.

Football combines two of the worst things in American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.

The sheer quantity of brain power that hurled itself voluntarily and quixotically into the search for new baseball knowledge was either exhilarating or depressing, depending on how you felt about baseball. The same intellectual resources might have cured the common cold, or put a man on Pluto.

College football is a sport that bears the same relation to education that bullfighting does to agriculture.

The reason women don’t play football is because eleven of them would never wear the same outfit in public.

When it comes to sports I am not particularly interested. Generally speaking, I look upon them as dangerous and tiring activities performed by people with whom I share nothing except the right to trial by jury.

If I lose at play, I blaspheme; if my fellow loses, he blasphemes. So, God is always the loser.

I was called "Rembrandt" Hope in my boxing days, because I spent so much time on the canvas.

To dope the racer is as criminal, as sacrilegious, as trying to imitate God; it is stealing from God the privilege of the spark.

Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second.

We are inclined that if we watch a football game or baseball game, we have taken part in it.

Sports are the reason I am out of shape. I watch them all on TV.

Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.

I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have.

Sister, you're trying to keep me alive as an old curiosity, but I'm done, I'm finished, I'm going to die.

I will not survive this attack. Stalin has finally accomplished the task he attempted unsuccessfully before.

Go away. I'm all right.

Go on, get out - last words are for fools who haven't said enough.

I owe much; I have nothing; the rest I leave to the poor.

The car seems OK...

Too late for fruit, too soon for flowers.

Everybody has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case. What now?

I see black light.

I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring.

God will pardon me, that's his line of work.

It is very beautiful over there.

I should have drunk more Champagne.

One never knows the ending. One has to die to know exactly what happens after death, although Catholics have their hopes.

Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.

I am not the least afraid to die.

Goodnight my darlings, I'll see you tomorrow.

But how the devil do you think this could harm me?

This time it will be a long one.

Where is my clock?

I'm bored with it all.

Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking towards me, without hurrying.

Friends applaud, the comedy is finished.