1) I'm bad! Been chopin' trees. I done somethin' new for this fight. I done wrassled with an alligator. That's right. I have wrassled with an alligator. I done tussled with a whale. I done handcuffed lightning, throwed thunder in jail. That's bad. Only last week I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick. I'm so mean, I make medicine sick. (Muhammad Ali, qtd. When We Were Kings, 0:05:12)

2) I'm gonna fight for the prestige, not for me. But to uplift my little brothers who are sleeping on concrete floors today in America, black people who are living on welfare, black people who can't eat, black people who don't know no knowledge of themselves, black people who don't have no future. I want to win my title and walk down the allies, set on the garbage can with the wineheads. I wanna walk down the street with the dope addicts, talk to the prostitutes. So, I can help a lot of people. (Muhammad Ali, qtd. When We Were Kings, 0:54:52)

3) I don't know who that Muslim speaker was, but everything he said made sense. The man made me think about many things I had wondered about. But I didn't join right away. I went to CORE, Urban League, and N.A.A.C.P. meetings. I studied the Catholics, the Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-day Adventists, Baptists, and Methodists in a search for Knowledge. The most concrete thing I found in churches was segregation. (McDermott 38)

4) In the jungle, lions are with lions and tigers with tigers, and redbirds stay with redbirds and bluebirds with bluebirds. That's human nature too, to be with your own kind. I don't want to go where I'm not wanted. (Muhammad Ali, qtd. Lipsyte 34)

5) If you think the world was surprised when Nixon resigned, wait till I kick Foreman's behind. (Muhammad Ali, qtd. When We Were Kings, 0:01:35)

6) Sirs: You have sunk to an all-time tabloid low with your cover picture of that loquacious simpleton. (Letter to the Editor by Charles F. Faddis)

7) I am America. I am the part you won't recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me. (Muhammad Ali, 10k Truth Quotes by Muhammad Ali)

8) People do say I'm cocky, some say I need a good whuppin,' some say I talk too much, but anything I say I'm willing to back up. (Muhammad Ali, qtd. When We Were Kings, 0:03:16)

9) A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life. (Muhammad Ali, 10k Truth Quotes by Muhammad Ali)

10) Ali director Michael Mann sweeps the current Ali under the rug, ignoring him like an old relative in a nursing home, and instead memorializes the young Ali on-screen as if the champ had already died. The result is little more than a collection of every famous line ever uttered by Ali from 1964 to 1974. (Harkavy 145)

11) For a black man of the time, Ali was so awesomely visable (so loud and proud he could probably be seen (and heard) from space, the racial equivalent of the Great Wall of China. (Ellen))

12) I'm the most recognized and loved man that ever lived cuz there weren't no satellites when Jesus and Moses were around, so people far away in the villages didn't know about them. (Muhammad Ali, 10k Truth Quotes by Muhammad Ali)

13) The king is going home to get his throne. From the root to the fruit, that's where everything started at. This is God's act, and you are part of it. This is no Hollywood set, this is real. Hollywood come in and take these kind of scenes and set 'em up--have somebody in the movies playing his life. This is real. We don't pick up a script. We get up in the morning feeling tired. Sometimes we feel good, sometimes bad, but we go through it with feeling. Muhammad Ali was born to do it. (Muhammad Ali's cornerman Drew "Bundini" Brown, qtd. When We Were Kings, 0:12:21)

14) I think Muhammad is a prophet. How you gonna beat God's son? Anybody that love poor people and little people gotta be a prophet. (Muhammad Ali's cornerman Drew "Bundini" Brown, qtd. When We Were Kings, 0:12:21)