You been hearing about how bad I am since you were a little kid with mess in your pants! Tonight, I'm gonna whip you till you cry like a baby.
Muhammad AliRead
I try not to speak about all the charities and people I help, because I believe we can only be truly generous when we expect nothing in return.
Interpretation
True generosity comes from giving without expecting anything in return.
In this quote, Muhammad Ali emphasizes that genuine generosity is marked by selflessness and the absence of expectations. He suggests that discussing charitable actions can detract from the purity of giving, as the act should be driven by a desire to help others rather than seeking recognition or reward.
In practice
In a speech about community service, I would quote Muhammad Ali to inspire action without seeking praise.
You been hearing about how bad I am since you were a little kid with mess in your pants! Tonight, I'm gonna whip you till you cry like a baby.
I've got it! I've got it! It'll make front-page headlines around the world. You can have me kidnapped, and then a couple of days before the fight I'll show up again
A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.
We all have the same God, we just serve him differently. Rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, oceans all have different names, but they all contain water. So do religions have different names, and they all contain truth, expressed in different ways forms and times. It doesn't matter whether you're a Muslim, a Christian, or a Jew. When you believe in God, you should believe that all people are part of one family. If you love God, you can't love only some of his children.
It's lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believed in myself.
Put yourself out on a limb, sucka, like me! - young Cassius Clay to heavily favored thug Sonny Liston during the weigh in before Cassius wins his first title and changes his name to Muhammad Ali.
The task for sociology is to come to the help of the individual. We have to be in service of freedom. It is something we have lost sight of.
To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell.
And he began to see the truth, that Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.
Man sometimes thinks he's been elevated to be the controller, the ruler, but he's not. He's only part of the whole. Man's job is not to exploit, but to oversee, to be a steward. Man has responsibility, not power.
The beauty myth moves for men as a mirage; its power lies in its ever-receding nature. When the gap is closed, the lover embraces only his own disillusion.
Be confident small immortals. You are not the only voice that all things utter, nor is there eternal silence in the places where you cannot come.
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