Muhammad Ali on Persistence Quotes

"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."

"Live everyday as if it were your last because someday you're going to be right."

"It's the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen."

"Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. The hands can't hit what the eyes can't see."

"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."

"I figured that if I said it enough, I would convince the world that I really was the greatest."

"My toughest fight was with my first wife."

"I've wrestled with alligators, I've tussled with a whale. I done shackled lightning, thrown thunder in jail."

"If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it—then I can achieve it."

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

"I am the double greatest."

"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."

"I’m a fighter. I believe in the eye-for-an-eye business. I’m no cheek-turner."

"I wish people would love everybody else the way they love me. It would be a better world."

"A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life."

"I should be a postage stamp. That's the only way I'll ever get licked."

"I am the astronaut of boxing. Joe Louis and Jack Dempsey were just jet pilots. I'm in a world of my own."

"What keeps me going is goals."

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

"I don't have to be what you want me to be. I'm free to be what I want."

"I'm young, I'm handsome, I'm fast, I'm pretty and can't possibly be beat."

"Champions aren't made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them—a desire, a dream, a vision."

"Don't count the days, make the days count."

"I know where I'm going and I know the truth, and I don't have to be what you want me to be."

"Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth."

"I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong. No Viet Cong ever called me nigger."

"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."

"It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it's the pebble in your shoe."

"Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer."

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

"Inside of a ring or out, there is nothing wrong with going down. It's staying down that's wrong."

"To be a great champion you must believe you are the best. If you’re not, pretend you are."

"The man who has no imagination has no wings."