I saw that everything really was written there before me, and that the doors had only been closed before because I hadn't realized that I was the one person in the world with the authority to open them.
There is the eternal war between those who are in the world for what they can get out of it and those who are in the world to make it a better place for everybody to live in.
Without birth and death, and without the perpetual transmutation of all the forms of life, the world would be static, rhythm-less, undancing, mummified.
Nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal; The Mayfly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow speared by the shrike, And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder and prey.
Much of human history can, I think, be described as a gradual and sometimes painful liberation from provincialism, the emerging awareness that there is more to the world than was generally believed by our ancestors.
When I beat Sonny Liston, I shocked the world. When I joined the Muslims, I shocked the world. When I beat George Forman, I shocked the world. I am from the House of Shock