Born on June 30, 1966, Mike Tyson is a retired American professional boxer who competed from 1985 to 2005. Tyson is regarded as one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time. Tyson was given the nicknames “Iron Mike” and “Kid Dynamite” in his early career before becoming known as “The Baddest Man on the Planet”
53 Mike Tyson Quotes
- “Without struggle, there is no progress. There has to be a struggle in your life.”
2. “Fear is the greatest obstacle to learning.”
3. “If you don’t have the spiritual warrior in you, you’ll never be a fighter.”
4. “Discipline is doing what you hate to do, but do it like you love it.”
5. “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.”
6. “If a person gets up after the fall, it’s not physics, but character.”
7. “Man is not mean to be humble, he’s meant to be humbled.”
8. “There’s nothing wrong with making mistakes, just don’t make the same ones. We don’t want to duplicate them.”
9. “You need to learn independence. You have to be independent – it builds character.”
10. “Everyone has a plan ’till they get punched in the mouth”
11. “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”
12. “The ability to apply the discipline, the ability to do what needs to be done no matter how he feels inside, in my opinion, is the definition of a true professional.”
13. “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.”
14. “Everybody thinks this is a tough man’s sport. This is not a tough man’s sport. This is a thinking man’s sport. A tough man is gonna get hurt real bad in this sport.”
15. “You can’t give kids a fighting chance if you don’t give them a fighting mind.”
16. “Fighting is not physical, fighting is spiritual. It’s the determination and the will in the guy.”
17. “Everyone that you fight is not your enemy and everyone who helps you is not your friend.”
18. “As long as we persevere and endure, we can get anything we want.”
19. “Many times I quit boxing even before I became a professional boxer”
20. “If you are not humble, life will visit humbleness upon you.”
21. “The tempt for greatness is the biggest drug in the world.”
22. “Anger is my biggest enemy in life.”
23. “God is not going to send someone to hell for my mistakes. So God and I have to deal with my own salvation.”
24. “What if I failed and lost? I had been in a million fights on the streets”
25. “Hard times fall upon everybody. Whatever it is, we’re going to get out of it.”
26. “As long as I am breathing, your legacy will continue to live on.”
27. “I try my best to learn from other people’s mistakes. I have a lot of respect for people who can change.”
28. “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
29. “In America, we’re really good at blowing things up but not so good in knowing where the pieces will land.”
30. “Later in that tape, the dispatcher kept telling Desiree that she was the victim, she was the victim, and then Desiree slipped something very interesting in.”
A must Read – Undisputed Truth: My Autobiography by Mike Tyson
This is a shocking book; Tyson has lived a life that is at least as dramatic as that of a decadent and hedonistic rock star. It is filled with profanity, as others have noted, but Tyson speaks this way in real life, so it makes sense for him to do the same in his autobiography. This book doesn’t hold anything back.
31. “You stand your ground and you perform your art. That’s what the artist does. The artist is about perfection.”
32. “Freedom is a very dangerous thing. We ration it very closely.”
33. “God, it would be good to be a fake somebody rather than a real nobody.”
34. “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.”
35. “I had to persevere because this was my life. This championship, this was the stuff I dreamt of all my life, and I wasn’t gonna be denied.”
36. “Discipline is doing what you hate to do but nonetheless doing it like you love it.”
37. “Greatness is not guarding yourself from the people; greatness is being accepted by the people.”
38. “If you don’t do it for passion and love, the emotional outcome will be disastrous.”
39. “My style was impetuous, my defenses were impregnable, and I was ferocious.”
40. “Things can change. Life is all a learning process.”
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41. “Some people try to get you out of slavery for you to be their slave.”
42. “Social media made y’all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.”
43. “There are animals disguised as human beings out here, you are not sophisticated enough to decipher the two.”
44. “Every win, regardless a good or bad one, gives you more confidence.”
45. “You can’t be disturbed by anything. There’s no emotion involved. You can’t feel sorrow, you can’t feel pity, there’s nothing you feel. The job has to be done.”
46. “Some students would make fun of me, but nobody fucked with me.”
47. “No matter what anyone says, no matter the excuse or explanation, whatever a person does in the end is what he intended to do all along.”
48. “The only thing I do is just pray for inspiration, for a way of thinking, because I don’t have any particular goal in sight.”
49. “My biggest weakness is my sensitivity. I am too sensitive a person.”
50. “When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap – people shouldn’t read that stuff.”
51. “I don’t try to intimidate anybody before a fight. That’s nonsense. I intimidate people by hitting them.”
52. “Social media made y’all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.”
53. “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.”
From 1987 to 1990, he held the undisputed heavyweight title. 12 of Tyson’s first 19 professional victories by knockout came in the first round. Tyson set a record as the youngest boxer to ever win a heavyweight title when he won his first belt at the age of 20 years, four months, and 22 days. He was the first heavyweight boxer to simultaneously hold the WBA, WBC, and IBF titles, and he was also the only heavyweight to successfully unify all three in a succession
Additional Read:
Mike Tyson has made and spent a fortune — here’s how he rebuilt a multi million dollar empire