I have to be real cool and not savage and radical, because it makes me angry when I think about it when I see the white boys, who are really the number one citizens, the future rulers.
I came back to Louisville after the Olympics with my shiny gold medal. Went into a luncheonette where black folks couldn't eat. Thought I'd put them on the spot. I sat down and asked for a meal. The Olympic champion wearing his gold medal. They said, "We don't serve niggers here." I said, "That's okay, I don't eat 'em." But they put me out in the street. So I went down to the river, the Ohio River, and threw my gold medal in it.
"I'm the greatest thing that ever lived! I'm the king of the world! I'm a bad man. I'm the prettiest thing that ever lived. I shook up the world! I want justice..."
What I will remember most about Mr Mandela is that he was a man whose heart, soul and spirit could not be contained or restrained by racial and economic injustices, metal bars or the burden of hate and revenge.
Black people ALL are fightin' you all for freedom, justice and equality. One believes that intermarriage is gonna solve it, and 200 years from now we all will be a beautiful cream color. He really believes it. One believe that gittin' some rifles and shootin' up the country is gonna solve it, another believes that education. One day we'll be the president. One believe that we gotta git into the white man's pockets and get all the money.
I got it made the rest of my life, financially and in every other way. There's nobody in the world like me. I'm getting out just in time. If I was twenty seven, I could still kick ass. I don't have to beat Holmes. Why? I raised him, he worked three years as a sparring partner for me.
Women are not equal with men, that's sure. When the woman is in danger she always looks to the man for help. We are superior by nature. The black or white woman needn't worry in life because the world is ruled by the white man.
Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?
You may talk about Sweden, you may talk about Rome,
but Rockville Center's Floyd Patterson's home.
A lot of people said that Floyd couldn't fight,
but you should have seen him on the comeback night.