Mike Tyson Quotes

(Quoting Cus D'Amato)
Discipline is doing what you hate to do, but do it like you love it.

The ones who lost and quit, well their demons will follow them to their grave because they had a chance to face them and they didn’t. You have to face your demons, Mike, or they will follow you to eternity.

The boxing’s the easy part. When you get into the ring to fight, that’s the vacation. But when you get in the gym, you have to do things over and over till you’re sore and deep in your mind you say, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore,’ I push that out of my mind.

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.

Confidence was everything. But in order to possess that confidence, you had to test yourself and put yourself on the line. It doesn’t come from osmosis, out of the air. It comes from consistently going over the visualization in your mind to help you develop the confidence that you want to possess.

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

God is not going to send someone to hell for my mistakes. So God and I have to deal with my own salvation.

Fear is the greatest obstacle to learning. But fear is your best friend. Fear is like fire. If you learn to control it, you let it work for you. If you don’t learn to control it, it’ll destroy you and everything around you. Like a snowball on a hill, you can pick it up and throw it or do anything you want with it before it starts rolling down, but once it rolls down and gets so big, it’ll crush you to death. So one must never allow fear to develop and build up without having control over it, because if you don’t you won’t be able to achieve your objective or save your life. “Consider

One day Cus came to me. “You know, Camille really wants you to do your chores. I could care less if you did, but you should do them because it will make you a better boxer.” “How’s taking out the trash going to make me a better boxer?” I scoffed. “Because doing something you hate to do like you love it is good conditioning for someone aspiring towards greatness.

MIKE WOULD LIKE TO THANK: Cus D’Amato, my mentor, friend, and general. Because of you, my life has reached heights I could never have imagined. Without you, I don’t know where I would be today. My gratitude to you is immeasurable.

God, it would be good to be a fake somebody rather than a real nobody.

Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

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

He was very vindictive and always out for revenge. He couldn’t live without enemies, so he created them.

Freedom is a very dangerous thing. We ration it very closely.