‘I’m so mean I make medicine sick’ – Muhammad Ali’s greatest quotes
5 min readBy Eurosport | The Rundown
Ali addresses his public
Muhammad Ali turns 70 today, and to celebrate the life of the Louisville Lip, we have compiled his greatest quotes.
Here are 37 of Ali’s most vicious, funny and profound sayings – one for each knock-out of his professional career.
ON BOXING
1 – ‘I done wrestled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale, only last week I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick. I’m so mean I make medicine sick.’
2 – ‘There’s not a man alive who can whup me. I’m too fast. I’m too smart. I’m too pretty. I should be a postage stamp. That’s the only way I’ll ever get licked.’
3 – ‘I’m so fast that last night I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room was dark.’
4 – ‘I am the astronaut of boxing. Joe Louis and Dempsey were just jet pilots. I’m in a world of my own.’
5 – ‘If you dream of beating me, you’d better wake up and apologise.’
6 – ‘There are two things that are hard to hit and see. That’s a spooky ghost and Muhammad Ali.’
7 – ‘I’m not the greatest; I’m the double greatest. Not only do I knock ’em out, I pick the round.’
8 – ‘Boxing is a lot of white men watching two black men beat each other up.’
9 – ‘People don’t realize what they had till it’s gone. Like President Kennedy – nobody like him. Like The Beatles, there will never be anything like them. Like my man, Elvis Presley – I was the Elvis of boxing.’
Ali fights Joe Frazier in the ‘Thrilla in Manila’
ON JOE FRAZIER
10 – ‘Frazier is so ugly he should donate his face to the US Bureau of Wildlife.’
11 – ‘Frazier is so ugly that when he cries, the tears turn around and go down the back of his head.’
12 – ‘It will be a killer, and a chiller, and a thriller, when I get the gorilla in Manila.’
13- ‘I always bring out the best in men I fight, but Joe Frazier, I’ll tell the world right now, brings out the best in me. I’m gonna tell ya, that’s one helluva man, and God bless him.’
Ali versus Foreman in the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’
ON GEORGE FOREMAN
14 – ‘I’ve seen George Foreman shadow boxing. And the shadow won.’
15 – ‘Floats like a butterfly, sting like a bee, his hands can’t hit what his eyes can’t see.’
16- ‘Now you see me, now you don’t. George thinks he will, but I know he won’t!’
17- ‘It’s a divine fight. This Foreman – he represents Christianity, America, the flag. I can’t let him win. He represents pork chops.’
18 -‘That all you got George?’ (Ali during the Rumble in the Jungle)
ON FLOYD PATTERSON
19- ‘Hey Floyd – I seen you! Someday I’m gonna whup you! Don’t you forget, I am the greatest!’
20 – ‘I’ll beat him so bad, he’ll need a shoehorn to put his hat on.’
Cassius Clay vs Sonny Liston: Tale of the tape
ON SONNY LISTON
21 – ‘Sonny Liston is nothing. The man can’t talk. The man can’t fight. The man needs talking lessons. The man needs boxing lessons. And since he’s gonna fight me, he needs falling lessons.’
22 – ‘I shook up the world! I shook up the world!’
23 – ‘Why, chump, I bet you scare yourself to death just starin’ in the mirror. You ugly bear! You ain’t never fought nobody but tramps and has beens. You call yourself a world champion? You’re too old and slow to be champion!’
24 – ‘Get up sucker and fight. Get up and fight.’ (Ali to Liston during their second fight)
ON HOWARD COSSELL
25 – ‘You’re always talking about, Muhammad, you’re not the same man you were 10 years ago. Well, I asked your wife, and she told me you’re not the same man you was two years ago!’
ON GOLF
26 – ‘I’m the best. I just haven’t played yet.’
ON LIFE
27 – ‘When you can whip any man in the world, you never know peace.’
28 – ‘Cassius Clay is a slave name. I didn’t choose it and I don’t want it. I am Muhammad Ali, a free name – it means beloved of God – and I insist people use it when people speak to me and of me.’
29 – ‘What’s my name, fool? What’s my name?’ (Ali to Ernie Terrell who refused to call him Muhammad Ali)
30 – ‘I know I got it made while the masses of black people are catchin’ hell, but as long as they ain’t free, I ain’t free.’
31 – ‘Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs?’
32 – ‘I got nothing against no Viet Cong. No Vietnamese ever called me a ‘nigger’.’
33 – ‘A man who views the world the same at 50 as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.’
34 – ‘Silence is golden when you can’t think of a good answer.’
35 – ‘One of these days, they’re liable to make the house I grew up in a national shrine.’
36 – ‘A rooster crows only when it sees the light. Put him in the dark and he’ll never crow. I have seen the light and I’m crowing.’
37 – ‘It’s hard to be humble, when you’re as great as I am.’
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