Mike Tyson
The most frightening man alive, at twenty
Resilience
Tyson was the youngest heavyweight champion in history at twenty, lost everything including three hundred million dollars, went to prison, and came back as something nobody expected — reflective, funny, disarmingly honest about his own wreckage. He talks about fear better than any philosopher on this list, because he did it for a living.
I struggle with just surviving out here.
CNN Piers Morgan Live: Interview with Mike Tyson · 2013
I take myself too seriously and that's not fun.
CNN Larry King Live: Interview with Mike Tyson · 2010
Confidence breeds success. Success breeds confidence.
CNN Larry King Live: Interview with Mike Tyson · 2010
The way you fight your fight would be the way you live your life.
HBO film Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth, clip aired on CNN Piers Morgan Live: Interview with Mike Tyson · 2013
I don't allow my past to imprison me for my future and my present.
CNN Piers Morgan Live: Interview with Mike Tyson · 2013
No one's ever gonna beat me. I'm the greatest fighter in the world.
NPR Morning Edition: Mike Tyson's New Book Is A Memorial To The Man Who Made Him A Champion · 2017
You can't help who you are, what you are, but you can sure help your conduct.
CNN Larry King Live: Interview with Mike Tyson · 2010
I don't have no life outside of that. I don't have no night life, that's over.
NPR Morning Edition: Mike Tyson's New Book Is A Memorial To The Man Who Made Him A Champion · 2017
I live in a big glass house, you know, and I beg that no one throws a pebble at it.
CNN Larry King Live: Interview with Mike Tyson · 2010
I live from respect from my peers, that's the most important thing in the world to me.
CNN Piers Morgan Live: Interview with Mike Tyson · 2013
Everybody has a plan until they get hit. Then, like a rat, they stop in fear and freeze.
South Florida Sun-Sentinel interview with Mike Berardino (2012), quoted in Quote Investigator: 'Quote Origin: Everybody Has Plans Until They Get Hit for the First Time'
We have to keep on living and being alive is for the living and being dead is for the dying.
CNN Larry King Live: Interview with Mike Tyson · 2010
I've lost all my friends, all my friends that I ever believed were my friends and not my friends anymore.
CNN Piers Morgan Live: Interview with Mike Tyson · 2013
If you're in a fight with somebody and you hurt them, the objective of the fight is not to back off and let them recoup.
1994 prison interview clip, aired on CNN Larry King Live: Interview with Mike Tyson
I'm just very grateful to God that I had this journey in life, not finished of course, but so far has been pretty stimulating for me.
CNN Piers Morgan Live: Interview with Mike Tyson · 2013
Read when you have a plan and no idea how you react to being hit
