“Anybody who thinks I’m taking this fight for a paycheck doesn’t know me. My whole life I’ve been achieving the impossible.”

This is a great position to be in. I don’t really believe there is any fighter, in any decade that can be in my position of luxury that I’ve been in for many years.

I don’t know what being a 48-year-old feels like. There are a lot of 48 year olds that aren’t in good shape. The pharmacy is making a killing off of them.

This fight isn’t about boxing, it’s something deeper than that.

There are so many things I’ve done that the world of boxing has witnessed. It’s going to be difficult for the boxing people to pick one of my performances as the best.

There’s always a chance you will see something new in a fight. Especially in boxing.

The powers that be don’t want athletes or boxers to become as smart as they are.

I was made to be where I’m at. I just had to go through some challenges, so that I can educate others later.

I would never let a white boy beat me. You can print that. I would never lose to a white person.

I function better when my back is to the wall.

Tavoris Cloud might actually be hungrier than me. How often do you hear a fighter say that his opponent is hungrier than he is? I don’t need hunger. I’m motivated by my desire to prove that I’m different and that I can still silence the critics.

I’m lining up my troops to go to battle with. Tarver is the man at light heavyweight. He has the credibility of the fans and media, and that’s what counts. That’s why I am taking this risk, but I am taking it by preparing myself with good people.

I must destroy everybody that comes in front of me. I must execute them and I must do it in grand style. I must slay Robert Allen like I must slay De La Hoya or anybody else that steps in that ring.

Enjoy that you can see me now. I would love to see the great Michael Jordan and Julius Erving in their younger days, but they’re gone. Look at me at 50, I’m going to eat right and live right so I can take less punches and look normal.

I got knocked down. Anybody could be knocked down, anybody can be knocked out, but it’s not what happened, but what happens next.

Did you hear what this idiot just said!? He said it’s not about the W…It’s everything about the W with me!

I still shop at Costco. I just started tipping two years ago.

If you want to fight a war on drugs, sit down at your own kitchen table and talk to your own children.

You stand up to bullies. Don’t shrink back. You fight back with all your strength, and the press is going to have to do it, politicians are going to have to do it, all of us are going to have to do it.

When we start fighting crime by any means necessary we become guilty of the same hypocrisy as law enforcement agencies throughout history that break the rules to get the villains, and so become villains themselves.

I’m not leaving the fight just because I decided not to run. I’m going to expand my political action committee and volunteer for it. I’m going to do lots of other things where I will have a voice. So I’m not leaving the fight.

I’d had 35 professional fights and mentally I was tired of it. I’d sort ot fallen out of love with the sport.

Let me tell you, life is interesting regardless of when you are in the fight.

Natural hazards, however formidable, are inherently less dangerous and less uncertain than fighting hazards. All conditions are more calculable, all obstacles more surmountable than those of human resistance.

Conversely, it is correct to say that bringing about peace would be the best way to fight terror.