The outgoing and spontaneous person that the world knew while I was boxing was a persona that I created to sell tickets and promote my career. In my private life, I am quiet and reflective by nature.
Live everyday as if it were your last because someday you’re going to be right.
A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.
God will not place a burden on a man’s shoulders knowing that he cannot carry it.
You could be the world’s best garbage man, the world’s best model; it don’t matter what you do if you’re the best.
Stay in college, get the knowledge. And stay there until you’re through. If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you. Advice to a young person to continue his education.
I had to prove you could be a new kind of black man. I had to show the world.
The only way for peace between the races is a separation of the races.
Money and riches don’t mean nothing to me. I don’t care nothing about being no rich individual. I’m not living for glory or for fame; all this is doomed for destruction. You got it today, tomorrow it’s gone. I got bigger things on my mind than that. I got Islam on my mind.
I’ve never really resented hard work because I’ve always liked it. Up every morning for roadwork. Going to the gymnasium every day at 12 o’clock. I never change my pattern.
Someone stole my bicycle and I said I was going to learn to fight so that I could catch him and beat him up. But I never did catch him. But I ended up the champ of the whole world.
Women are not equal with men, that’s sure. When a woman is in danger, she always looks to a man for help. We are superior by nature. Black or white women needn’t worry in life because the world is ruled by white men.
I’m The Greatest, but only in relation to fighting.
Fighting by itself doesn’t interest me anymore. I want to help people, the black people and I need any kind of media to spread my thought: God, charity, peace.
I don’t know how many millions I’ll make, so I have to give some back to charity. God blesses me with the money, but only if I give some away.
I never push in front my muscles, only my religion, so I’m protected.
My main purpose is to pray five times a day. And that’s not easy.
I live. I travel. I eat. I pray. These are the things I do. I’d rather be in my condition than be a man with four children in a four-bedroom house, working hard every day to pay for his house, taking his children to school.
I wasn’t thinking of being the greatest. But I knew I had a chance.
No nation can rise to the height of glory unless your women are side by side with you.
We should have a State in which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own lights and culture and where principles of Islamic social justice could find free play.