Mike Tyson famous quotes

He always wanted me to smoke weed with him, and I never did it, and I wish I did...That's my biggest regret.
-- Mike Tyson

#Weed #Regret #Wish

Five heads are definitely better than one when they're thinking in the same perspective. I think that you really need to have people that you trust. And for me, trust comes from that synchronizing, that same-mindedness.
-- Mike Tyson

#Thinking #Perspective #People

As long as we persevere and endure, we can get anything we want.
-- Mike Tyson

#Motivational #Sports #Perseverance

Anger is my biggest enemy in life.
-- Mike Tyson

#Enemy

Discipline is doing what you hate to do, but nonetheless doing it like you love it.
-- Mike Tyson

#Motivational #Workout #Hate

I'm not a Republican, but I have some conservative views on certain things. I'm not a Democrat, either. It's just very difficult that these people hate each other over a belief. I think it all comes down to ego and competitiveness.
-- Mike Tyson

#Hate #Thinking #Views

I don't try to intimidate anybody before a fight. That's nonsense. I intimidate people by hitting them.
-- Mike Tyson

#Sports #Life And Love #Fighting

I don't want my kids to be like me, I don't want my daughter to date a guy like me. You know, for a guy like me success is to take care of my children to take care of their life and make 'em cushioned. I don't want them to be around people like me. You know, success for me would be that they never have the opportunity of being in the presence of someone like me.
-- Mike Tyson

#Daughter #Children #Kids

God lets everything happen for a reason. It's all a learning process, and you have to go from one level to another.
-- Mike Tyson

#Sports #Everything Happens For A Reason #Levels

I'm not a good-looking guy. I don't care if my nose gets mashed.
-- Mike Tyson

#Guy #Care #Noses

I'm the best ever. I'm the most brutal and vicious, the most ruthless champion there has ever been. No one can stop me. Lennox is a conqueror? No! I'm Alexander! He's no Alexander! I'm the best ever. There's never been anyone as ruthless as me. I'm Sonny Liston. I'm Jack Dempsey. There's no one like me. I'm from their cloth. There is no one who can match me. My style is impetuous, my defense is impregnable, and I'm just ferocious. I want his heart! I want to eat his children! Praise be to Allah!
-- Mike Tyson

#Fear #Children #Heart

I don't have to be that gentleman ["baddest man on the planet"] anymore. Now I have to be "this" guy. And in order to be "this" guy, I have to be smiling, I have to be gregarious, I have to be entertaining, and I have to be friendly. This is what my career needs now. I've adapted. But 20 years from now, I may need a different persona.
-- Mike Tyson

#Men #Order #Years

When you're a great finisher, you'll become popular. Joe Louis was a great finisher.
-- Mike Tyson

#Boxing

To be successful in sports or business, you really have to live the lifestyle. Success is about lifestyle. Just because I was training and working hard, that didn't make me champion or a good fighter. My lifestyle made me a good fighter. In my mind and my daily life, I was the heavy weight champ when I was 15 or 14. I lived the life of the heavyweight champion, and that's who I became. And that is so much more than just training. So, when the time presented itself, that's who I already was. I was ready. I was already there.
-- Mike Tyson

#Sports #Live Life #Successful

I'm a dreamer. I have to dream and reach for the stars, and if I miss a star then I grab a handful of clouds.
-- Mike Tyson

#Dream #Inspirational Sports #Stars

Emotion is more than just anger. When I am performing, I need emotion, but I need control, too. Emotion drives the best performance and is necessary, but it must be controlled. I believe Fedor [Emelianenko] does that. I do too. We may look different in how we do it, but we both do it.
-- Mike Tyson

#Believe #Different #Needs

Sometimes I put on a ski mask and dress in old clothes, go out on the streets and beg for quarters.
-- Mike Tyson

#Sports #Clothes #Dresses

In the scheme of life, in emotion and loss, I responded the way I did. I lost. I shouldn't have responded that way. I've had some people tell me that I did a great thing - sticking up for myself - but to me, personally, with the way that I handled my emotions, I lost. But I learned. That will not happen again.
-- Mike Tyson

#Loss #People #Way

Unfortunately, sometimes you can't have fun accomplishing your goals. Sometimes people don't have the determination, the will, the steadfastness, the tenacity, they give in under the slightest struggle.
-- Mike Tyson

#Determination #Fun #Motivation

I earned that the strong will always beat the weak, but the smart will beat the strong. Boxing is a tough guy sport. But in the end, the tough guy gets to clean the streets and be a bodyguard. In the ring, the tough guy is going to get hurt; at the end of the day, he's going to talk funny. Only the smartest win. So, I know it's cliché, but power - real power - comes from knowledge, comes from smarts.
-- Mike Tyson

#Sports #Strong #Hurt

When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
-- Mike Tyson

#Sports #Book #People

What was most important was the knowledge [aspect] of the fight. I learned this early on and just told myself to "upgrade my mind." That's just what I wanted to do my whole life.
-- Mike Tyson

#Fighting #Mind #Important

I ain't the same person I was when I bit that guy's ear off.
-- Mike Tyson

#Sports #Boxing #Guy

I'm just like you. I enjoy the forbidden fruits in life, too.
-- Mike Tyson

#Sports #Boxing #Fruit

It's good to know how to read, but it's dangerous to know how to read and not how to interpret what you're reading.
-- Mike Tyson

#Reading #Dangerous

My power is discombobulatingly devastating. It's ludricrous these mortals even attempt to enter my realm.
-- Mike Tyson

#Motivational #Boxing #Realms

You have to have a bunch of dimensions [of yourself]. You have to be able to adapt in this world. You can't be a nice guy living in a world of savages.
-- Mike Tyson

#Nice #Guy #World

My biggest weakness is my sensitivity. I am too sensitive a person.
-- Mike Tyson

#Sports #Weakness #Sensitive

I don't want to be remembered. As long as my kids remember me, I'd rather be forgotten by everybody else.
-- Mike Tyson

#Kids #Long #Want

Anyone with a grain of sense would know that if I punched my wife I would rip her head off. It's all lies. I have never laid a finger on her.
-- Mike Tyson

#Sports #Rip #Lying

If my children will live a better life than I did by my getting brain damage, by my being brain dead, then let it be.
-- Mike Tyson

#Children #Brain #Damage

When you have something in life that you want to accomplish greatly, you have to be willing to give up your happiness…I’ve lost all my sensitivity as far as being embarrassed, being shy, you just have to lose that.
-- Mike Tyson

#Giving Up #Shy #Want

I try my best to learn from other people's mistakes. I have a lot of respect for people who can change.
-- Mike Tyson

#Mistake #People #Trying

I'm on the Zoloft to keep from killing y'all.
-- Mike Tyson

#Crazy #Killing

If Mike Tyson is in your courtroom and you don't send him to jail, it's an injustice. Everyone knows he's a bad guy. So if he is in your courtroom, he should go to jail.
-- Mike Tyson

#Jail #Guy #Injustice

No one wants to get up at 4 and run when it's pitch-dark, but it has to be done. The only reason i do it so early is because i believe the other guy isn't doing it and that gives me a little edge
-- Mike Tyson

#Running #Believe #Dark

I hate to cry and I hate to sound like sour grapes, but no one ever listens to me. No one ever hears what I have to say.
-- Mike Tyson

#Hate #Sound #Cry

The tempt for greatness is the biggest drug in the world.
-- Mike Tyson

#Sports #Greatness #Drug

If you have a lawyer, sometimes you can get out of trouble. I've gotten into a lot of trouble because I didn't have a lawyer. I've also had some bad lawyers, too. But the good ones, the ones I liked, they became me. They became whatever situation I was involved in. When I felt pain, so did they. When I succeeded, so did they. They became me. They became whatever the situation was that they became involved with.
-- Mike Tyson

#Pain #Lawyer #Sometimes

I'm the biggest fighter in the history of the sport. If you don't believe it, check the cash register.
-- Mike Tyson

#Sports #Believe #Cash

Sometimes you have to wait for the right deal. They all seem good, at least at first, and they may make you some quick money. But when the right deal comes, and it fits into your [overall] plan, it's just overwhelming success. Sometimes, with the long-term deals, you have to take a risk if you're going to get a reward. It's exactly like fighting. Sometimes you have to take chances to get that huge win.
-- Mike Tyson

#Fighting #Winning #Long

Fear is your best friend or your worst enemy. It's like fire. If you can control it, it can cook for you; it can heat your house. If you can't control it, it will burn everything around you and destroy you. If you can control your fear, it makes you more alert, like a deer coming across the lawn.
-- Mike Tyson

#Fire #House #Enemy

I respect the media. But periodically things come up. Like the guy in Toronto [CP24 Interview]. This is what I run into, also. Everybody that helps you is not necessarily your friend. And everybody that fights you is not necessarily your enemy. So you always have to be on guard.
-- Mike Tyson

#Running #Fighting #Media

I know I'm going to blow one day. My life is doomed the way it is. I have no future.
-- Mike Tyson

#Sports #Fate #Blow

Fighting is all about calmness and relaxation. My appearance was all an illusion. My appearance is of a mad man, but I'm really calm and collected. Even though I'm fighting, I'm calm and relaxed as possible, despite my displays, because once you get excited, you can't fight at the highest level of your ability.
-- Mike Tyson

#Fighting #Men #Mad

I try to catch them right on the tip of his nose, because I try to punch the bone into the brain.
-- Mike Tyson

#Brain #Trying #Noses

Fighting is spiritual. It appears to be physical from the layman's eyes. In my fights, I seemed to be angry and mad - all that stuff you saw me doing, the yelling and screaming and being mean in the ring - but I'm cool as a cucumber. I can hear everybody talking around me outside of the ring. I can see everybody. I know what is going on.
-- Mike Tyson

#Spiritual #Mean #Eye

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.
-- Mike Tyson

#People #Soul #Tycoons

Without struggle, there is no progress. There has to be struggle in your life. You have to grow in experience to control your ego. Cause, you know, an ego can be crushed, it can be killed, it can be smashed, but it comes back. It never dies. That's the thing about the ego: it never dies.
-- Mike Tyson

#Struggle #Ego #Progress

Everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth.
-- Mike Tyson

#Money #Police #Mouths

Everybody's got plans... until they get hit.
-- Mike Tyson

#Plans

Discipline makes hard men. Every hard man is capable of being a killer. But every killer is not capable of being a hard man. They can't endure that much. It's all about the endurance. That's why they become killers. Because they can't endure the pain. They need to kill the pain to stop it.
-- Mike Tyson

#Pain #Men #Discipline

Greatness is not guarding yourself from people. Greatness is being accepted by the people
-- Mike Tyson

#Greatness #People #Guarding

To some people the ego is evil. It gives you so much. It gives you everything you want. But it takes back too much in return. It gives you everything: money, riches, women, glamour, everything you want. But in return it takes back so much, and you're soulless. That's its goal. The ego's goal is to leave you soulless.
-- Mike Tyson

#Evil #Giving #Goal

I don't understand why people would want to get rid of pigeons. They don't bother no one.
-- Mike Tyson

#Motivation #Fear #People

I had it in my mind: to be confident, and to keep saying that until the confidence appeared. But I took it too far. Confidence did help make me champion, but, man, I took it to a whole different level. I was a megalomaniac. I was not humble and it eventually came back on me. So I want my kids to know, keep humbleness and kindness in their hearts. It will prevail.
-- Mike Tyson

#Kindness #Heart #Humble

I intend to fight and I want to win. But my priorities are basically to be a good Brother and a strong one, and to try to be a good father one day.
-- Mike Tyson

#Strong #Brother #Father

Kindness and humbleness are really good qualities to possess. But, if you have to use the word humble, it means you're not humble. And if you're not humble to this world, this world will thrust humbleness upon you.
-- Mike Tyson

#Kindness #Mean #Humble

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.
-- Mike Tyson

#Morning #Men #Hands

Any man can do what he has to do. But doing it like you love it? That is what takes it to a whole different level. A champion does it like he loves it, even when he doesn't.
-- Mike Tyson

#Men #Champion #Levels

You can't stay married in a situation where you are afraid to go to sleep in case your wife might cut your throat.
-- Mike Tyson

#Sleep #Divorce #Cutting

Confidence applied properly is the path of genius. You must always be in a state of confidence. And the way you sustain a state of confidence is by testing yourself. Difficult quagmires that may occur; there's always a test. You have to seek them out. You constantly have to test yourself to prepare for these quagmires. That's why I always put myself to the test.
-- Mike Tyson

#Quagmire #Genius #May

I'm a Muslim, but I think Jesus would have a drink with me. He would be cool. He would talk to me.
-- Mike Tyson

#Sports #Jesus #Thinking

You have to feel comfortable being uncomfortable. I'm always comfortable being uncomfortable. And to be comfortable being uncomfortable, I have to hone my discipline, which to me is doing what I have to do, but also doing it like I love it.
-- Mike Tyson

#Discipline #Uncomfortable #Feels

How dare these boxers challenge me with their primitive skills? It makes me angry.
-- Mike Tyson

#Motivational #Skills #Boxing

The most important thing in the world for show business, really, you know everything's a high-tech business, but what people want now is what they can't get - exclusivity.
-- Mike Tyson

#People #Important #World

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.
-- Mike Tyson

#Pain #Believe #Boxing

The mind is a real dangerous neighborhood to travel by ourselves.
-- Mike Tyson

#Real #Mind #Dangerous

Fighting is endurance, knocking a guy out in 10 seconds is not fighting, its beating him to the punch. But when you put in that time, that is fighting because you are thinking
-- Mike Tyson

#Fighting #Thinking #Guy

When I was young, I thought I was a god. Now, I just basically work on staying humble. My priorities changed. Just to be able to try to change them - that was frightening to me.
-- Mike Tyson

#Humble #Priorities #Trying

This is my career. I have children to raise. I have to retaliate. He butted me. Look at me. My kids will be scared of me.
-- Mike Tyson

#Children #Kids #Careers

I never think of physical fighting. It's always spiritual. Fighting is spiritual.
-- Mike Tyson

#Spiritual #Fighting #Thinking

I fight for perfection
-- Mike Tyson

#Sports #Motivational Sports #Fighting

If you did everything your mind told you to do, you do some really strange stuff. You'll probably be in jail, you'll be in trouble. But, it's all about control. We all have to control our feelings. That's the thing that separates us from animals.
-- Mike Tyson

#Animal #Jail #Feelings

I just want to conquer people and their souls.
-- Mike Tyson

#Crazy #People #Soul

My main objective is to be professional but to kill him.
-- Mike Tyson

#Funny #Crazy

There's nothing like being young, and happy, and fighting.
-- Mike Tyson

#Fighting #Young

I'm going to gut you like a fish.
-- Mike Tyson

#Sea #Fishing #Rivers

I'm a vegan. I lost 150 pounds because of being a vegan.
-- Mike Tyson

#Pounds #Vegan #Lost

I could feel his muscle tissues collapse under my force. It's ludicrous these mortals even attempt to enter my realm.
-- Mike Tyson

#Sports #Fear #Boxing

Back when I was a kid, I never liked the kind of kids that my kids have become. They're privileged and have things very easy. But I'm proud of them. None of my kids are getting high, they love school, they're very popular.
-- Mike Tyson

#School #Kids #Getting High

I'm in trouble because I'm normal and slightly arrogant. A lot of people don't like themselves and I happen to be totally in love with myself.
-- Mike Tyson

#Love #Sports #People

I never wanted to do anything else but fight, when I was a kid. I never had any broader perspective of my own perspective. I didn't know anything about anything else. I just wanted to fight until I could fight no more, and then I wanted to own a bar and drink and tell war stories.
-- Mike Tyson

#War #Kids #Fighting

When Jesus comes back, these crazy, greedy, capitalistic men are gonna kill him again.
-- Mike Tyson

#Jesus #Crazy #Men

Anything that helps pay the bills, I love it. Anything that makes people happy, I'm happy with that.
-- Mike Tyson

#People #Pay #Bills

When I fight someone, I want to break his will. I want to take his manhood. I want to rip out his heart and show it to him.
-- Mike Tyson

#Sports #Life And Love #Rip

Things can change. Life is all a learning process.
-- Mike Tyson

#Life Changing #Life Is #Process

I'm scared every time I go into the ring, but it's how you handle it. What you have to do is plant your feet, bite down on your mouthpiece and say, 'Let's go.'
-- Mike Tyson

#Feet #Boxing #Scared

I used to have lots of tigers. I had all sorts of exotic pets when I had some money. Before I was broke, I had everything. Pigeons and vultures, lions, tigers, and bears. I had it all.
-- Mike Tyson

#Pet #Exotic #Lions

Another thing that freaks me out is time. Time is like a book. You have a beginning, a middle and an end. It's just a cycle.
-- Mike Tyson

#Motivation #Fear #Book

I like entertaining people. I like being on stage. I like being in the life. This is what I do. This is the only thing I know how to do besides rob people and fight. Even when I was robbing people, I was entertaining them. But that's just what I love doing.
-- Mike Tyson

#Fighting #People #Robbing

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

#Perfect #Boxing #Chaos

My nature is to get instant gratification. On stage, I can feel everybody's anticipation. I know what they want, I know what I'm going to give them, I know when I'm going to give it to them, I know when they want it.
-- Mike Tyson

#Giving #Want #Anticipation

Whatever you want, especially when you’re striving to be the best in the world at something, there’ll always be disappointments, and you can’t be emotionally tied to them, cos’ they’ll break your spirit.
-- Mike Tyson

#Disappointment #World #Want

The U.S. prostitutes are fighting with everybody, shooting at everybody. It's like dating a gangbanger.
-- Mike Tyson

#Fighting #Dating #Shooting

I normally don't do interviews with women unless I fornicate with them.
-- Mike Tyson

#Interviews

I don't care how much you love each other, if you have secrets, it'll never work. That's why she's your loved one, because it's the love of one. Togetherness, you are one.
-- Mike Tyson

#Secret #Care #Togetherness

When I'm on stage, I'm not me playing me. I'm somebody else doing me. I could never go on stage and be like, "Hey, I'm Mike Tyson. My mother and father was in the sex industry." That's the politically correct way to say it, but I would really say, "My mother and father were pimps and whores. This is my life." I could never do that as Mike Tyson. Because I'd feel sorry for myself. But if I could be objective about it and be somebody else, portraying Mike Tyson, saying this story, then it's easy sailing.
-- Mike Tyson

#Mother #Sex #Sorry

In order to succeed greatly, you have to be prepared to fail greatly. If you can't do both of them, you've got a problem.
-- Mike Tyson

#Order #Succeed #Problem

You stand your ground and you perform your art. That's what the artist does. The artist is about perfection.
-- Mike Tyson

#Art #Perfection #Doe