Quotes from Jonathan Eig

It was all by design, as he said later. Angry fighters don't think clearly. They don't stick to their plans. They get frustrated, sloppy. Clay knew that Liston was sensitive about his image, that he yearned for respect, and so Clay worked to deny him that respect. By labeling Liston an ugly bear, Clay was tweaking his opponent's most sensitive nerve and perhaps using racism to do it

When they reached her door, Clay leaned in for a kiss, and Swint closed her eyes to give him one back. Then came a series of loud thudding sounds—and no kiss. When Swint opened her eyes, Clay was lying on the ground at the foot of the stairs in a tangle of long arms and legs. Clay had fainted. From the bottom of the stairs, he looked up sheepishly at Swint. "Ain't nobody gonna believe this," he said

It's not easy for a rebel to remain a rebel all his life. It's exhausting

one irrepressible folk hero hailed as our favorite defender of the truth and resister of authority," Budd Schulberg

Eventually, Martin persuaded Clay to fly. "But then he went to an army supply store and bought a parachute and actually wore it on the plane

Mildenberger was more nuisance than hazard, like a developing nation trying to make the threats of a superpower.

He warned that materialism undermined our moral values, that nationalism threatened to crush all hope of universal brotherhood, that militarism bred cynicism and distrust. He saw a moral rot at the core of American life and worried that racism had blinded many of us to

In an essay for the Saturday Review, a magazine that appealed to economically comfortable, upper-middlebrow readers, King wrote: "The flames of Watts illuminated more than the western sky; they cast light on the imperfections in the civil rights movement and the tragic shallowness of white racial policy in the explosive ghettos.

calling him "a fierce fighter and a man of peace.

And we are not wrong… If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie. Love has no meaning. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Boxing is strange to watch. It's impossible to take your eyes off of it. Part of our brains like to watch violence. At the same time, it's horrifying to watch two men try to knock each other out.