Mike Tyson
Former American heavyweight boxing champion.
"You're smart too late and old too soon."
"You can set a good example that you don't have to throw blows or be belligerent to get your point across."
"Then I came out of jail and beat guys because they were basically scared."
"He was trying to scrutinize with my brain."
"When you see me smash somebody's skull, you enjoy it."
Every fighter's got a plan until they get hit.
"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."
In a 1988 Sports Illustrated interview: "Real freedom is having nothing. I was freer when I didn't have a cent. Do you know what I do sometimes? Put on a ski mask and dress in old clothes, go out on the streets and beg for quarters."
"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."
Reported in The New Yorker as: “At one point, I thought life was about acquiring things. Life is totally about losing everything.”
"I put people in body bags when I'm right."
After his final fight: "I felt like I was 120 years old. I feel like Rip Van Winkle right now."
"I didn't know how to be any other way. I felt like one of those barbarian kings just coming to conquer the Roman Empire."
"It's such a shallow world I am involved with and I can't take it no more."
"No one gives a fuck about me. No one cares if my children starve, if they're on welfare. I have to support my children. I need more money."
What I want in a woman is protection. Loyalty. Companionship. Loyalty, friendship, companionship, ferociousness. I want her to protect me, and have my back to the bitter end. If I have a fight, I want her to jump in. Even if I'm winning; even if she's ninety pounds. I like strong women—not necessarily a masculine woman—but I like strong women. I like strong, say a woman who runs a C.E.O. corporation. I like a strong woman with confidence—massive confidence—and then I want to dominate her sexually.
"I'll never be happy. I believe I'll die alone. I would want it that way. I've been a loner all my life with my secrets and my pain. I'm really lost, but I'm trying to find myself. I'm really a sad, pathetic case. My whole life has been a waste. I've been a failure. I just want to escape."
"I'm just like you. I enjoy the forbidden fruits in life, too. I think it's un-American not to go out with a woman, not to be with a beautiful woman, not to get my dick sucked ... It's just what I said before, everybody in this country is a big fucking liar. [The media] tells people ... that this person did this and this person did that and then we find out that were just human and we find out that Michael Jordan cheats on his wife just like everybody else and that we all cheat on our fucking wife in one way or another either emotionally, physically or sexually or one way."
"I don't do anything. My life sucks."
ESPN reporter: There were reports, Mike, that you were out partying in Vegas. Is that, in fact, the case? Tyson: This is not true. This is not true at all. Um, one day, I went out one day - because when somebody trains, you just get crazy and bored - and I went to a strip club because I gave a dancer a lap dance. Reporter: You gave HER a lap dance? Tyson: That's just what I like to do. I do what I want to do.