Top 40 Bernard Hopkins Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “If you don’t know your own value, somebody will tell you your value, and it’ll be less than you’re worth.”

— Bernard Hopkins

Featured in: Believe in Yourself Quotes, Self-Worth Quotes, Athlete Quotes, Self-Belief Quotes, Know Your Worth Quotes

2. “It takes no effort to be ordinary. Ordinary is not even a challenge. You can do nothing and be ordinary.”

— Bernard Hopkins

3. “You’re hated by some, loved by others, but that’s what’s great about being different. If everybody loved you, that means you’re not doing the right thing most of the time.”

— Bernard Hopkins

4. “There’s no great person that lived that didn’t go through scrutiny or ridicule and prosecution in all types of ways, to be who they are in history.”

— Bernard Hopkins

5. “I must destroy everybody that comes in front of me. I must execute them and I must do it in grand style. I must slay Robert Allen like I must slay De La Hoya or anybody else that steps in that ring.”

— Bernard Hopkins

6. “The only thing I can do is be right about what I say. Because I know I’m being watched. I understand what I’m facing. All I can do is put the work behind it.”

— Bernard Hopkins

7. “I got knocked down. Anybody could be knocked down, anybody can be knocked out, but it’s not what happened, but what happens next.”

— Bernard Hopkins

8. “I’m not going to give up. If you pay attention to my plan and the way I live and the way I eat, then you have a chance to extend your life a few more years.”

— Bernard Hopkins

9. “I am going in there to win this fight. I don’t think people are taking me seriously. I’m gonna surprise a lot of people. This guy helped two people make history.”

— Bernard Hopkins

10. “There’s always a chance you will see something new in a fight. Especially in boxing.”

— Bernard Hopkins

11. “This fight isn’t about boxing, it’s something deeper than that.”

— Bernard Hopkins

12. “I wouldn’t wanna fight me, because I know it wouldn’t be a good outcome for both.”

— Bernard Hopkins

13. “I’ve done so many unpredictable things and so profoundly. Even the people who want to go against me, are afraid to go against me. They’ve been wrong so many times. A lot of them are just being mum right now. They must feel I can still do things.”

— Bernard Hopkins

14. “I have the philosophy that I’m different. I have the body, the well-being and the experience. Now the teacher gets to show the student that he’s worthy of the lesson. Let me show him through experience.”

— Bernard Hopkins

15. “Smokey Wilson was like my Gandhi. If I had run into somebody else in prison, with a different set of values, the world might have never known one of the greatest boxing talents ever to come out of Philadelphia.”

— Bernard Hopkins

16. “I am an old man, I just happen to be an old man that can fight.”

— Bernard Hopkins

17. “It takes a very very strong individual not to be corrupt in any of those things as time moves on. Myself and other people who went that road and experienced that world, some got a second birth of life and some is in the dirt.”

— Bernard Hopkins

18. “I don’t know what being a 48-year-old feels like. There are a lot of 48 year olds that aren’t in good shape. The pharmacy is making a killing off of them.”

— Bernard Hopkins

19. “I was knocking guys out in the streets before I knew how to throw a jab and keep your chin down, In most neighbourhoods, the guy that could fight gets respect. You got in the parties free. I never had to pay the dollar because people were scared of me. But back then I was ignorant.”

— Bernard Hopkins

20. “When you have somebody that’s smart and you’re not so smart, to me that’s modern day slavery because you’re being dictated to.”

— Bernard Hopkins

21. “Early on in my career I had the kind of anxious where you couldn’t sleep at night. That anxiousness is like a virus we all have in us. Some you can deal with but some will wipe you out.”

— Bernard Hopkins

22. “You’re not going to see a new Bernard Hopkins. I’m too old for that crap. I think what you will see is something different that I know I am capable of doing.”

— Bernard Hopkins

23. “I didn’t need to take any fight for the last 10 years. But I’ve always fought the best and I’ve always wanted to prove myself to the best.”

— Bernard Hopkins

24. “I always not only want push the envelope in my career but I also have an itch for going against the grain.”

— Bernard Hopkins

25. “Anybody who thinks I’m taking this fight for a paycheck doesn’t know me. My whole life I’ve been achieving the impossible.”

— Bernard Hopkins

26. “The NBA has a voice that’s why they have a lockout. The NFL has a voice that’s why they had a lockout. Boxing is the only sport that’s individually represented the individual people – Managers, Promoters and Boxers.”

— Bernard Hopkins

27. “Enjoy that you can see me now. I would love to see the great Michael Jordan and Julius Erving in their younger days, but they’re gone. Look at me at 50, I’m going to eat right and live right so I can take less punches and look normal.”

— Bernard Hopkins

28. “If I’m in a situation where Duane Ford is one of the judges, I have to pick it up.”

— Bernard Hopkins

29. “The only way you can get experience is from the clock. Time works with some people and against some people. Fortunately, the clock has worked in my favor.”

— Bernard Hopkins

30. “I want to be the poster child for taking care of yourself after 40. Obesity is an epidemic in this country and I’m a living, breathing example of what it means to stay healthy.”

— Bernard Hopkins

31. “There are so many things I’ve done that the world of boxing has witnessed. It’s going to be difficult for the boxing people to pick one of my performances as the best.”

— Bernard Hopkins

32. “I’m 100 percent clean. I’m doing this off of nuts and bananas.”

— Bernard Hopkins

33. “The Pavlik fight was the first time I heard the masses put the word knockout attached to my opponent. I’m real keen on what people say. Ninety percent of it might be garbage, but something in there might be the plan. That woke me up and I knew I wanted to destroy.”

— Bernard Hopkins

34. “I function better when my back is to the wall.”

— Bernard Hopkins

35. “The controversy was that Chad Dawson thought he was in an MMA fight and not a boxing match.”

— Bernard Hopkins

36. “I still shop at Costco. I just started tipping two years ago.”

— Bernard Hopkins

37. “I’ve got a history of frustrating guys and making them angry.”

— Bernard Hopkins

38. “The middleweight division is one of the most exciting divisions in the sport. Fighters can punch like heavyweights and have the speed of the lightweights. You have the best of world worlds.”

— Bernard Hopkins

39. “The streets was basically my parents.”

— Bernard Hopkins

40. “I was told I would be back in 90 days. If I listened to people, I would be back where I came from – the penitentiary.”

— Bernard Hopkins

41. “I really didn’t care. I’d do something to somebody and walk in front of them the next day like it never happened. I had very very low value on my own life.”

— Bernard Hopkins

42. “Tavoris Cloud might actually be hungrier than me. How often do you hear a fighter say that his opponent is hungrier than he is? I don’t need hunger. I’m motivated by my desire to prove that I’m different and that I can still silence the critics.”

— Bernard Hopkins

43. “Boxers are resilitant guys. We know how to take of a big punch that hits us, we know how to survive. Oscar is a survivor, he’s gonna be back bigger and stronger.”

— Bernard Hopkins

44. “I was made to be where I’m at. I just had to go through some challenges, so that I can educate others later.”

— Bernard Hopkins

45. “The media here know that there’s the possibility that I can pull this off. I’m confident. Confidence comes with work. When you prepare yourself and you know you’re going into combat with all of your bullets, you have the confidence to go into battle.”

— Bernard Hopkins

46. “This is a great position to be in. I don’t really believe there is any fighter, in any decade that can be in my position of luxury that I’ve been in for many years.”

— Bernard Hopkins

47. “I like Sergio Martinez. I think he’s strong, he’s gritty, he’s got plenty of heart, he’s not the fanciest guy you might have seen in boxing but he has the goods to be around a long time in the Middleweight division.”

— Bernard Hopkins

48. “The powers that be don’t want athletes or boxers to become as smart as they are.”

— Bernard Hopkins

49. “I’m lining up my troops to go to battle with. Tarver is the man at light heavyweight. He has the credibility of the fans and media, and that’s what counts. That’s why I am taking this risk, but I am taking it by preparing myself with good people.”

— Bernard Hopkins