Quotes from Jonathan Eig

William Lee Lyons Brown, chairman of the Brown-Forman distillery, where Faversham worked, and a great southern charmer ("Ah wonder if you realize," he once told Sports Illustrated, "that Cassius Clay's aunt cooks for my double-first cousin?

When we love on the agape level," he wrote years later, "we love men not because we like them Ã¢â'¬Â¦ but because God loves them.

Bad guys are supposed to lose. I change that. I win

Despite his plagiarism, and despite his fundamental disagreements with them, King learned lasting theological lessons from Tillich and Wieman. In his seminal work, The Courage to Be, Tillich wrote that the courage to be requires acceptance of anxiety—the anxiety that comes with guilt, condemnation, and death. That courage means staying connected to God when one loses faith. "But doubt is not the opposite of faith," Tillich wrote, "it is one element of faith.

obfuscating everything in sight

One forgets that though a clown never imitates a wise man, the wise man can imitate the clown.

I'm going to tell you something," Ali said, "and I don't want you ever to forget it . . . Black men scare white men more than black men scare black men

Ali said he felt a duty to explain Islam to Americans and to explain America to Muslims.

who seemed to have grown his afro to new and previously unexplored heights, inspiring Norman Mailer to write that King looked like a man falling down an elevator shaft, "whoosh went the hair up from his head

Cassius Clay Jr., who was only six months younger, Emmett Till

Soda pop, he declared, was as bad as alcohol or cigarettes for an athlete, and he vowed never to touch them.

Ali's chances of winning "as remote as Zaire

It was almost impossible to discourage him," Joe Martin said. "He was easily the hardest worker of any kid I ever taught.

The only thing about school he seemed to like was the audience it provided.

Everyone knew the draft was rigged to protect wealthy white men from service, while the poor and dark-skinned served in disproportionately high numbers, he said

Attention was what he craved most, and he earned it with irrepressible exuberance as well as with boxing.

In one raid on the offices of Bugs Moran, at 127 North Dearborn, where the sign on the door said Acme Sales Company, cops said they found four quarts of good Scotch (which probably meant they found eight). They confiscated it, but somehow it disappeared before the officers could get back to the station. "Scotch? Scotch?" teased one of the cops who made the bust. "Impossible! Why, the country's dry and so am I. That rhymes. Can you rhyme?

go on to the end—hoping, praying, serving, loving—realizing that only the strong are free.

You can't condemn a man for wanting peace. If you do, you condemn peace itself.

King's calm tone and conservative attire may have disguised the boldness of his words: "I think it's better to be aggressive at this point," he said. "It seems to me that it is both historically and sociologically true that privileged classes do not give up their privileges voluntarily. And they do not give them up without strong resistance.

It is hardly a moral act," read the article, "to encourage others patiently to accept injustice which he himself does not endure Ã¢â'¬Â¦ We southern Negroes believe that it is essential to defend the right to equality now. From this position we will not and cannot retreat." King's fervor lit a flame in many

He said he was thinking about retiring from the boxing ring and devoting his life to traveling and "seeking a peaceful, workable solution to the race problem.

I'm the champion of the whole world," Cassius said, "and I want to meet the people I'm champion of.

Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. had always adored his name. He had said it reminded him of a Roman gladiator, that it was the prettiest name he had ever heard, perfect for the prettiest and greatest heavyweight champion of all time