Joe Frazier quotes:

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.

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.

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.

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.

Trust me. Sometimes God comes down and puts his hand on you if you're too big in your thoughts.

Boxing is the only sport you can get your brain shook, your money took and your name in the undertaker book.

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.

I've achieved 'the American dream.' I feel it's my duty to help others achieve their vision, too - especially the youth.

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 got a burlap sack, put a brick in the middle, and filled it with rags, corncobs, some Spanish moss, and sand. I hung that sack off the branch of an oak tree. I'd wrap my hands with a necktie of my daddy's and punch at it. My mom gave me an hour a day. My brothers and sisters said, "Nah." I said, "You'll see."

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.

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.'

I hated Ali. God might not like me talking that way, but it's in my heart.

I grew up in Beaufort, South Carolina, in a six-room farmhouse with a couple of leaning posts to keep it from fallin'. I came up in a time when men were men.

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.

When I was a boy, I used to pull a big cross saw with my dad. He'd use his right hand, so I'd have to use my left.

Twenty years I've been fighting Ali, and I still want to take him apart piece by piece and send him back to Jesus.

Ali always said I would be nothing without him. But what would he have been without me?

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.

I want to hit him, step away and watch him hurt. I want his heart.

Champions aren't made in the ring, they are merely recognized there. What you cheat on in the early light of morning will show up in the ring under the bright lights.

My mom allowed me to take an old burlap bag and fill it with moss, corn stalks and rocks, then hang it from a tree and spend an hour a day punching my heavy bag.

Life doesn't run away from nobody. Life runs at people.

Preaching don't mean you are a true man. You got to go out and do.

My left eye went when I was young. I was working the speed bag, and some steel went in the eye and scratched it to pieces. I was kinda blind in that eye.

The boxing game has been good, so we need to give back. We have to teach young men how to be men.

If you cheat in the dark of the morning, you'll get found in the bright lights of the night.

You can map out a light plan or a life plan, but when the action starts, it may not go the way you planned, and you're down to the reflexes you developed in training. That's where roadwork shows - the training you did in the dark of the mornin' will show when you're under the bright lights.

I loved fighting... It gave me the opportunity to prove myself, to stand up and say, 'I'm the best. I matter. I am.'

This is just another man, another fight, another payday.

Fightin' George Foreman is like being in the street with an eighteen-wheeler comin' at you.

This ultimate fighting stuff is something I don't agree with. Once a man is down, you have to let him have a chance to prove how good he is.

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'.