Autobiographers From The United States

"I have the same malice in my heart as far as the fight game is concerned, but outside the ring, I won't say anything a dignified man won't say."

"That shit is the real deal. Listen: I’m a black motherfucker from the poorest town in the country. I’ve been through a lot in life. And I know him. When I see him, he shakes my hand and respects my family. None of them—Barack, whoever—nobody else does that. They’re gonna be who they are and disregard me, my family. So I’m voting for him. If I can get 20,000 people or more to vote for him, I’m gonna do it."

"One morning I woke up and found my favorite pigeon, Julius, had died I was devastated and was gonna use his crate as my stickball bat to honor him. I left the crate on my stoop and went in to get something and I returned to see the sanitation man put the crate into the crusher. I rushed him and caught him flush on the temple with a titanic right hand he was out cold, convulsing on the floor like an infantile retard."

"I probably have a 20,000-word vocabulary. I'll match my wits with anyone on literature, science and the arts."

"I'm addicted to perfection. Problem with my life is I was always also addicted to chaos. Perfect chaos."

"I don't know that person anymore, that guy in '86, '87. I don't know that guy no more. I don't have no affinity for that guy no more. I have no affinity for the guy who said, 'I am the greatest fighter God produced.' I have no affinity for the guy who said he would try to push his [opponent's] nose bone up into his brain. I just don't know that guy. I don't know who he is. I don't know where he came from. I don't have no kind of connection with him no more."

"After his final fight: "I felt like I was 120 years old. I feel like Rip Van Winkle right now.""

"This is a weird feeling in my life I have to deal with, not being a violent man anymore when my whole life's reputation was built on being extremely violent. I just don't know how to deal with that right now. I don't even go to strip clubs no more. I don't know who I am sometimes, but I am not the guy I used to be. I'm not an angel or anything. I'm still lascivious, periodically. I'm just looking for some balance in my life."

"On Muhammad Ali: "No man like him. There just isn't, everything that we have, he supersedes us, even our arrogance and our ego...I'd say from a boxing perspective, Ali is a fucking animal. He looks more like a model than a fighter, but what he is, he's like a tyrannosaurus rex with a pretty face. He's just mean and evil, and he'll take you to deep water and drown you. He's very special, the best in the world.""

"I don't have the desire to hurt anyone anymore. I see a fly, but I don't have the nerve to get up and kill it."

"I don't have the stomach for this anymore. I don't have anything to fight for anymore."

"The spirit makes you a great fighter not drugs or anything ... the smartest fighter, the fighter that's more determined, the fighter that's dedicated, the fighter that wants it the most.. you have to have the desire to hurt him [to be the best fighter]."

"I just don't have the desire no more, I don't have the stomach to do it no more. I don't even kill insects in my house. I just don't kill anything no more. I used to kill pigeons, rip their heads off, 'You dirty rat pigeon!' I don't even have the heart to kill an animal no more. I just changed my whole life in general. That probably could have changed the way I fight."

"1990: "It's nothing personal, but I'm going to kill this guy.""

"2005: “I just don’t have the guts for it anymore. I don’t want to disgrace the sport. This is a great sport. It can take men from humble beginnings and have them rub shoulders with royalty.”"

"1988: "I just have this thing inside me that wants to eat and conquer. Maybe it's egotistical, but I have it in me. I don't want to be a tycoon. I just want to conquer people and their souls.""

"My career has been over since 1990."

"You guys would rather be with someone else who's equal to your status in life. Tiger Woods, or somebody. I comes across as crass, a Neanderthal, a babbling idiot sometimes. I like to show you that person. I like that person. He makes you want to come and listen to me."

"Then I came out of jail and beat guys because they were basically scared."

"We’re really good friends, we go back to ’86, ’87. Most of my successful and best fights were at Trump’s hotels. He didn’t manage me, though. He was just helping me with my court case. We’re the same guy, a thrust for power, a drive for power. Whatever field we’re in, we need power in that field. That’s just who we are. Balls of energy. We’re not even who we think we are. We’re fire. We’re made of this crap—water, motion, dirt, diamonds, emeralds. We’re made out of that stuff, can you believe it?"

"My intentions were not to fascinate the world with my personality."

"To a reporter in 2002: "It's interesting that you put me in the league with those illustrious fighters [Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Jack Johnson], but I've proved since my career I've surpassed them as far my popularity. I'm the biggest fighter in the history of the sport. If you don't believe it, check the cash register.""

"I still can’t believe [ Muhammad Ali ] knows my name. It astounds me he knows who I am. I first met Ali in 1976. I was locked up in a juvenile home and he came to visit. I’ve never forgotten it."

"Am I a born boxer? No—if I was, I'd be perfect."

"Reported by Joyce Carol Oates in 1986 (published in 1987): "'It's a lonely sport,' Mike Tyson, who is surrounded by people who love him, says.""

"Che Guevara is an incredible individual. He had so much, but sacrificed it all for the benefit of other people."

"Everybody has plans until they get hit for the first time."

"Everybody in boxing probably makes out well except for the fighter."

"Being a champion opens lots of doors—I'd like to get a real estate license, maybe sell insurance."

"I'm just a dark guy from a den of iniquity. A dark shadowy figure from the bowels of iniquity. I wish I could be Mike who gets an endorsement deal. But you can't make a lie and a truth go together. This country wasn't built on moral fiber. This country was built on rape, slavery, murder, degradation and affiliation with crime."

"I’m too stigmatized in this country, I want to do something that will have a tangible effect on people. I live in a world where I’m not too media-friendly, I would never be successful in this country."

"In a 2005 post-fight interview Tyson described boxing as "the hurt business.""

"Every shot was thrown with bad intentions." This has often also been quoted as, "Every punch was thrown with bad intentions."

"Most writers, in my opinion, are dysfunctional derelicts."

"1987: "I could have knocked him out in the third round but I wanted to do it slowly, so he would remember this night for a long time.""

"Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it."

"That is why when I heard Obama’s two speeches I was struck by how much he spoke in accord with the spirit of Vatican II. In those two addresses, as well as in his other speeches, he called for civility, for the end of name-calling, and for a willingness to work together to deal with our common problems, including abortion, rather than a stand-off determination to impose one’s principles without reckoning what the cost to the common good might be."

"John Kerry with a tan."

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population. For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama's appeal that "Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.""

"Barack is one of the smartest people you will ever encounter who will deign to enter this messy thing called politics."

"Days after jihadi gunmen slaughtered 11 staffers of the Charlie Hebdo magazine and a policeman on January 7, hundreds of thousands of French people marched in solidarity against Islamic radicalism. Forty-four world leaders joined them, but not President Barack Obama. Neither did his attorney general at the time, Eric Holder, or Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, both of whom were in Paris that day."

"There's only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He's half African-American."

"he's so brilliant"

"[Obama is] rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul."

"I am very proud as an American to have a black president. I was born and raised in America. I am a part of a minority. To see a minority representative being the president of the United States of America is extremely inspiring. It's just miraculous."

"Back in 2007, President Bush succeeded in convening Israeli and Arab leaders, together with the representatives of some 40 states, at the Annapolis peace conference. In May 2015, Obama had difficulty convincing several Arab leaders to attend a Camp David summit on the Iranian issue. The president who pledged to bring Arabs and Israelis together ultimately did so not through peace, but out of their common anxiety over his support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and his determination to reach a nuclear accord with Iran. Only Iran, in fact, still holds out the promise of sustaining Obama's initial hopes for a fresh start with Muslims."

"Even though we would have preferred to win, all of us in the room understood that the country would be in the hands of an honorable man."

"[Obama was] really everything the American public would expect from their national leadership. The President was at all times presidential. I would contend he was the smartest guy in the room. He had leadership skills we'd expect from a guy who had 35 years in the military."

"President Obama, himself a one-time advocate of single payer coverage, buckled to the insurance companies and its lobbyists and minions in Congress and agreed to health care legislation (the Affordable Care Act) that would continue to treat healing the sick as a profit center instead of a basic human right."

"Senator Obama made time to go to the gym but canceled a visit with wounded troops. It seems the Pentagon wouldn't allow him to bring cameras."