“I'd have to say losing the title to Ali in '74 was the lowest moment in sports for me. It was the most devastating thing in my boxing career, and it still hurts to this day.”

“I love the pigeons. I just raise them, period, and feed them. Pigeons go away, and they always come back. You get a touch of freedom, and then they are free to come back to you. I love the idea of pigeons.”

“A hero is someone right who doesn't change.”

“I tell my sons all the time, 'The most important thing in your life is fitness,' but a lot of fighters go overboard.”

“I started a youth center in Houston. The kids would come in and want to learn to box; they wanted to tear up the world, beat up the world. And I'd try to show them they didn't need anger. They didn't need all that killing instinct they'd read about. You can be a human being and pursue boxing as a sport.”

“I am so happy to be alive. That's the one thing I'd like for people to know. Sometimes people walk by and slip up and say the wrong thing about me, and I'll smile. They wonder why am I smiling. Because I'm happy that I'm alive.”

“Forgiveness is that subtle thread that binds both love and friendship. Without forgiveness, you may not even have a child one day.”

“That's my gift. I let that negativity roll off me like water off a duck's back. If it's not positive, I didn't hear it. If you can overcome that, fights are easy.”

“In boxing, I had a lot of fear. Fear was good. But, for the first time, in the bout with Muhammad Ali, I didn't have any fear. I thought, 'This is easy. This is what I've been waiting for'. No fear at all. No nervousness. And I lost.”

“I know from experience that you should never give up on yourself or others, no matter what.”

“When it gets to the part in life where you're more afraid of what your wife is going to do to you than if you box, say, Mike Tyson, you've got to get a new profession. You don't get to be a family. I know why boxers never quit, some of them. They don't have wives.”