First Quote Added
April 10, 2026
Latest Quote Added
"If you want to get technical about it, Rocky couldn't carry my jockstrap."
"That man was beautiful. Timing, speed, reflexes, rhythm, his body, everything was beautiful. And to me, still, I would say pound for pound...I'd say I'm the greatest heavyweight of all time, but pound for pound, I still say Sugar Ray Robinson was the greatest of all time."
"He come at me with two punches, a left and a right. I didn't know which hit me first. The punches didn't hurt me, but when I started to move, my legs wouldn't go with me, and I fell over on my head."
"The king, the master, my idol."
"Someone once said there was a comparison between Sugar Ray Leonard and Sugar Ray Robinson. Believe me, there's no comparison. Sugar Ray Robinson was the greatest."
"Robinson's repertoire, thrown with equal speed and power by either hand, includes every standard punch from a bolo to a hook—and a few he makes up on the spur of the moment."
"Robinson could deliver a knockout blow going backward."
"Rhythm is everything in boxing. Every move you make starts with your heart, and that's in rhythm or you're in trouble."
"He boxed as though he were playing the violin."
"This man was the ultimate warrior in the ring. He was the ultimate dispatcher of a foe. He was a distance fighter, an in-fighter, very scientific, beautiful to see, and he made this brutal, uncivilized, barbaric sport ballet."
"His use of rhythm, his timing, his footwork. Ray Robinson was the greatest combination of speed and power that ever came together in one fighter."
"He could knock you out going backwards. He could knock you out going forward. And that's why people remember him now as the greatest fighter we've ever had, pound for pound."
"Nobody beat Ray twice until he was 40 years old. His intelligence, his versatility, and his will to win were the reasons he won all those rematches. He created a new place for the imagination of a fighter."
"Don't give him a rematch. Because once you beat him that way, you'd be sure that the next time he'd adjust, and he'd know what to do."
"Ray Robinson was the perfect fighter because he had no weakness. He had one greatest chins of all time. He was never really knocked out in a 25 year career. Another special thing about Robinson was how many times he was able to get off the floor to win. He always rose to the occasion."
"He was a tremendous puncher, with either hand. Knock you dead puncher. Knock you dead. And a terrific finisher."
"You can truly see that there is some melting going on. When you see it, all of a sudden you say, 'Hey, that issue that we've been talking about off and on over the years, there really is something to it.'"
"Chambliss is a senator today by sole virtue of the fact that in 2002 he attacked incumbent Max Cleland -- who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam and earned Silver and Bronze stars -- as soft on defense and lacking in patriotism. Where was ol' Saxby during the war? Home, of course, claiming a "football injury." How you get elected reflects your character, and Chambliss should never be allowed to live down the shame of what he did in 2002. Never."
"I'd never seen anything like that ad. Putting pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden next to the picture of a man who left three limbs on the battlefield -- it's worse than disgraceful. It's reprehensible."
"We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. Presumably the plans for our employment were being changed. I was to learn later in life that, perhaps because we are so good at organizing, we tend as a nation to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization."
"Being unready and ill-equipped is what you have to expect in life. It is the universal predicament. It is your lot as a human being to lack what it takes. Circumstances are seldom right. You never have the capacities, the strength, the wisdom, the virtue you ought to have. You must always do with less than you need in a situation vastly different from what you would have chosen as appropriate for your special endowments."
"The thing that struck me most was the way he stuck to the motif [in the Flags and Targets painting by Jasper Johns].. ..the idea of stripes – the rhythm and the interval – the idea of repetition. I began to think a lot about repetition. [quote in 1960’s]"
"It [the first work in her show 'Wind' 2009] is dedicated to Jasper Johns I named it 'Homage à Jasper Johns'. As he basically did these 'flags', I mean he is so famous because of 'flags', and I was thinking of a flag too, and so I did this, so I was thinking of him because he's so incredibly famous and I'm not."
"[we gave] permission to do what we wanted.. .It would be hard to imagine my work at that time [c. 1956 – 1960] without his [Jasper John's] encouragement."
"It was my sensual excessiveness that jarred him [Jasper Johns]. He was always an intellectual. He read a lot, he wrote poetry – he would read w:Hart Crane's poems to me, which I loved but didn't have the patience to read myself – and he was often critical of things like my grammar. But you don't let a thing like that bother you if you have only two or three real friends."
"He [Jasper Johns] and I were each other's first serious critics. Actually he was the first painter I ever shared ideas with, or had discussions with about painting. No, not the first. Cy Twombly was the first. But Cy and I were not critical. I did my work and he did his. Cy's direction was always so personal that you could only discuss it after the fact. But Jasper and I literally traded ideas. He would say, 'I've got a terrific idea for you' and then I'd have to find one for him. [remark on his early cooperative relation with Jasper Johns, to his biographer w:Calvin Tomkins"
"Well, this man [Jasper Johns], in an interview wanted to know why I stopped painting [the so-called famous 'Silence of Duchamp'].. ..and he [Jasper Johns] had said [it was] because of dealers and money and various reasons. Largely moralistic reasons.. ..But you know; it wasn’t like that. It’s like you break a leg; you don’t mean to do it."
"..because his applying paint to it [the sculpture 'Painted Bronze, two painted ale cans', created by Jasper Johns] was absolutely mechanical or, at least, as close to the printed thing as possible. It was not an act of painting; actually, the printing [or painting?] was just like printing except it was made by hand by him. That doesn’t add a thing to it. – it’s just the idea of imitating the beer can that is important."
"To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist."
"Everybody is of course free to interpret the work in his own way. I think seeing a picture is one thing and interpreting it is another."
"I met him Cummingham around 1953 after a performance I saw. He was teaching and making dances for his company and was already working with John Cage. What interested me initially wasn't just the movement but also the music he worked with, which was unfamiliar to me.. .Later Bob Rauschenberg had been doing sets and costumes for the Cunningham Company.. .I can't say exactly how, but for a period of time, Cage, Cunningham, Rauschenberg, and I saw each other frequently and exchanged ideas. John [Cage] was very interested in presenting his ideas to other people, so it was impossible to be around and not to learn.. .He could apply his ideas on space and time to painting, or music or architecture.. .I don't have a clear sense of cause and effect in my painting, but it is probably there."
"I don't want my work to be an exposure of my feelings."
"Once, I made a kind of sculpture of a flag in bronze: it was an edition of three, I think. One of them was given on some occasion to President Kennedy. I became very upset that this was happening. It was given on Flag Day! (he laughs). It seemed to me to be such a terrible thing to happen. I complained bitterly to my very good friend John Cage, [the composer]. He said: "Don't let it worry you. Just consider it as a pun on your work". (he laughs)."
"He Robert Rauschenberg was a kind of enfant terrible at the time [around 1960] and I thought of him as an accomplished professional. He’d already had a number of shows, knew everybody, had been to Black Mountain College in South Carolina, working with all those avant-garde people.. ..Rauschenberg focused very much on working. I was prepared to do that, too. He was also involved with Merce Cunningham dance group and totally unconcerned with his success, in the cliché term. All of the activity had a lively quality, quite separate from any commercial situation.. ..[Rauschenberg moved into a loft in Jaser John's building and they very closely worked together for a couple of years]. You get a lot by doing. It's very important for a young artist to see how things are done. The kind of exchange we had was stronger than talking. If you do something then I do something then you do something, it means more than what you say."
"Painting has a nature which is not entirely translatable into verbal language. I think painting is a language, actually. It's linguistic in a sense, but not in a verbal sense. I think that one wants from painting a sense of life. And I think that is true. One wants to be able to use all of one’s facilities in all aspects of one’s life.. .You may have to choose how to respond and you may respond in a limited way, but you have been aware that you are alive. The final suggestion, the final statement, has to be not a deliberate statement but a helpless statement."
"I have attempted to develop my thinking in such a way that the work I've done is not me – not to confuse my feelings with what I produced. I didn't want my work to be an exposure of my feelings. Abstract Expressionism was so lively – personal identity and painting were more or less the same, and I tried to operate the same way. But I found I couldn't do anything that would be identical with my feelings. So I worked in such a way that I could say that it's not me. That accounts for the separation."
"Object in/ and space – the first impulse may be to give the object – a position – to place the object. (The object had a position to begin with). Next – to change the position of the object. – Rauschenberg's early sculptures – A board with some rocks on it. The rocks can be anywhere on the board. - Cage's Japanese rock garden – The rocks can be anywhere (within the garden).."
"Every artist feels alone and isolated. Friends are very important in terms of all sorts of definitions of oneself. They tell you what you are and what they are aside from the intellectual aspects."
"His [Marcel Duchamp's] idea was that anything could be art by focusing the mind to think of it as art. My images are similar but at the time my work was first being shown, 1958-'59, I was unfamiliar with Duchamp and Dada. Everyone said my work was Dada, so I read on it, went to Philadelphia to see the Arensberg Duchamp collection, was delighted by it and later met him (Duchamp).. .But it was all more a coincidence. Perhaps it’s that certain ideas get into the air, ideas that come out of our living and out of the environment automatically."
"Marcel Duchamp, one of this century's pioneers, moved his work through the retinal boundaries which had been established with Impressionism into a field where language, thought and vision act upon one another. There it changed form through a complex interplay of new mental and physical materials, heralding many of the technical, mental and visual details to be found in more recent art.. .He declared that he wanted to kill art ('for myself') but his persistent attempts to destroy frames of reference altered our thinking, established new units of thought, a "new thought for that object"."
"Merce [Cunningham] is my favorit artist in any field. Sometimes I'm pleased by the complexity of a work I paint. By the fourth day I realize it's simple. Nothing Merce [Cunningham] does [choreography for dance] is simple. Everything has a fascinating richness and multiplicity of direction. [Jasper Johns did a lot of décors for :Merce Cunningham, as Robert Rauschenberg did and Frank Stella,]"
"Shake (shift) parts of some of the letters in Voice (2). A-not-complete-unit, or a new unit. The elements in the 3 parts should neither fit nor not fit together. One would like not to be led. Avoid the idea of a puzzle which could be solved. Remove the signs of "thought". It is not the "thought" which needs showing.. .It is not interesting and should not be shown (to be) as interesting that the parts can be shifted. It was always true that they can be shifted. 'Duchamp's ironing board'. Does Teeny Duchamp have an ironing board?"
"What is meant by "the representation of space"? What distinguishes one representation from another? Does this mean "how does one see that one thing is not another thing?" What constitutes a change of focus?.. .What about "another way of establishing (?) "thingness"? "Something" can be either one thing or another (without turning the rabbit on its side).."
"The Watchman falls "into" the trap of looking. The "spy" is a different person.. ..The spy must be ready to "move", must be aware of his entrances and exits. The watchman leaves his job & takes away no information. The spy must remember & must remember himself & his remembering. The spy designs himself to be overlooked. The watchman "serves" as a warning. Will the spy & the watchman ever meet? In a painting named SPY, will he be present? The spy stations himself to observe the watchman. If the spy is a foreign object, why is the eye not irritated? Is he invisible? When the spy irritates, we try to remove him. "Not spying, just looking" – Watchman. Somewhere here, there is the question of "seeing clearly". Seeing what? According to what?"
"Put a lot of paint & a wooden ball or other object on a board. Push to the other end of the board. Use this in a painting. – ruler on board."
"Cubism is an anatomical chart of a way of seeing external objects. But I want to confuse the meaning of the act of looking."
"As you [Tono] has written, people say that my works are 'neutral'. But if you paint something, it is 'something', and it cannot be neutral. Being neutral is a mere expression of a form of intention."
"Bend color names which should be made of neon or copper tubing. Place an object on a surface – trace the object – then bend the object – leaving some part of it attached."
"An invisible drawing made in the air. Make a drawing behind your back. Make a stolen painting."
"Like drawing a straight line – you draw a straight line and it's crooked and you draw another straight line on top of it and it's crooked a different way and then you draw another one and eventually you have a very rich thing on your hands which is not a straight line. If you can do that the it seems to me you are doing more than most people. The thing is, it is very difficult to know oneself whether one is doing that or not, whether you mean what you do; and there is the other problem of the way you do it and whether sometimes you do more than you mean or you do less than you mean. It's very good if you can establish a language where it's clear that that is what you are doing – that you do what you mean to do."