Ali even told me in the ring, 'You can't beat me - I'm your Lord.' I just told him, 'Lord, you're in the wrong place tonight.'
Boxing is the only sport you can get your brain shook, your money took and your name in the undertaker book.
I don't think a man has to go around shouting and play-acting to prove he is something. And a real man don't go around putting other guys down, trampling their feelings in the dirt, making out they're nothing.
I went to see President Nixon at the White House. It wasn't difficult to get a meeting because I was heavyweight champion of the world. So I came to Washington and walked around the garden with Nixon, his wife and daughter. I said: I want you to give Ali his licence back. I want to beat him up for you.
Life doesn't run away from nobody. Life runs at people.
I had my Olympic gold medal cut up into eleven pieces. Gave all eleven of my kids a piece. It'll come together again when they put me down.
I know my destiny. I was born into animosity, bigotry and hatred. We had water for white folks, and water for coloured folks. White lines, black lines. I came from Beaufort in South Carolina, and it was tougher than Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.
Fightin' George Foreman is like being in the street with an eighteen-wheeler comin' at you.
When I go out there, I have no pity on my brother. I'm out there to win.
This is just another man, another fight, another payday.
I don't want to be no more than what I am.
I want to hit him, step away and watch him hurt. I want his heart.
My family's support and the negative environment of the day toward blacks in South Carolina became the forces that led me out of the South - first to New York, then to Philadelphia, where I found opportunity in the form of a PAL gym and my trainer, Yank Durham.
I was never, ever once angry in the ring.
I hated Ali. God might not like me talking that way, but it's in my heart.
There are places on a man's head that are as hard as a rock. Your head's actually stronger than your body. And you don't have too many instruments up there workin'. But you got a lot of tools workin' in that body: the liver, the kidneys, the heart, the lungs. You soften that up and see what happens. I lived by the body shot.
I wasn't a big guy. People thought the big guys would eat me up. But it was the other way around. I loved to fight bigger guys.
Had my own car at twelve years old. Left school in the tenth grade. Married when I was sixteen. Ain't hard to figure out; I was a man at a very young age.
Joe Frazier's life didn't start with Ali. I was a Golden Gloves champ. Gold medal in Tokyo '64. Heavyweight champion of the world long before I fought Ali in the Garden.
The boxing game has been good, so we need to give back. We have to teach young men how to be men.
