30 GREAT QUOTES FROM THE LEGENDARY MUHAMMAD ALI

Globally renowned as being the greatest professional boxer and a 20th century idol, the late Muhammad Ali was also an activist, civil right champion and a poet.

If there was one thing Muhammad Ali was better at than boxing was his way with words. He proclaimed himself 'the greatest of all time'. Below are 30 of his famous quotes.

'Float like a butterfly, Sting like a bee, your hands can't hit, what your eyes can't see.'

'If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it – then I can achieve it.'

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

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

To make America the greatest is my goal, so I beat the Russian and I beat the Pole. And for the USA won the medal of gold. The Greeks said you're better than the Cassius of old’.

'It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.'

'Live every day like it's your last because someday you're going to be right.' 

'A man who views the world the same at 50 as he did at 20 has wasted thirty years of his life.'

'I done wrestled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale, handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail; only last week I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick. I'm so mean I make medicine sick.'

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

'Boxing is a lot of white men watching two black men beating each other up.'  

'Cassius Clay is a slave name. I didn't choose it, and I didn't want it. I am Muhammad Ali, a free name, and I insist people using it when speaking to me and of me.' 

'It will be a killer and a chiller and a thriller when I get the gorilla in Manila.'

'I hated every minute of training, but I said, 'Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.' 

'Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.'  

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

'I am the greatest, I'm the greatest that ever lived. I don't have a mark on my face.'

'Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.'  

'Don't count the days; make the days count.' 

'It's not bragging if you can back it up.' 

'Champions aren't made in the gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them: a desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have last-minute stamina, they have to be a little faster, they have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill.'

    

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

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

'I am America. I am the part you won't recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky, my name not yours. My religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me’.

'The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses—behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.'

'He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.'

'It's lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believed in myself.'

‘Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth’

‘I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was’

'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.'   

RIP MUHAMMAD ALI.

 Images courtesy of google.