Joe Frazier Quotes

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.

If I lose, I'll walk away and never feel bad because I did all I could. There was nothing more to do.

Joe Louis is the greatest heavyweight champion of all time. Rocky Marciano is second only to Louis. Where do I rate Ali? Somewhere below me. I beat him, and if I could beat him, no doubt Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano could have beaten him.

Courage is how bad you want it.

Ali always said I would be nothing without him, but who would he have been without me?

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

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 hit him with body shots that would have brought down cities.

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

A sound body keeps a sound mind.

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

There's one thing I don't ever think about: losing ... Instead, I think about how I'm going to win, and how I can do it the quickest way.

Champions aren't made in the ring, they are merely recognized there.

His mouth made him feel like he was gonna win. Not his hands, I had my hand. He had his lips.

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

Ali kept calling me ugly, but I never thought of myself as being any uglier than him, I have 11 babies, somebody thought I was cute.

You got 3 things going against you: you're good, you're left-handed, and you're black

When I go out there, I have no pity on my brother. I am out there to win.

Work is the only meanin' I've ever known. Like the man in the song says, I just gotta keep on keepin' on.

I don't want nothing comin' at me that I can't stop.

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.

Since I was a boy of five or six, I had it in my mind I would be a world boxing champion.

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.

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

I had a job to do in the ring, and the businessmen around me had a job to do outside the ring, I did my job by beating up most of the guys they put in front of me and staying in shape, but the people I trusted didn't do their jobs.

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

Work is the only meanin' I've ever known.

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'.

The way I fight, it's not me beatin' the man. I make the man whip himself.

If I said 'Fall down', he's gonna fall down. I'm still his father.

Fighting George Foreman is like being in the street with an 18-wheeler coming at you.

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.