If you need a bit of advice or inspiration to reach your dreams, here are the top Cus D’Amato quotes to help you better yourself.
Cus D’Amato started his boxer training career at 22 by opening a gym called Empire Sporting Club.
Of Italian-American descent, he initially explored boxing as an amateur but was unqualified to be a professional because of his eye injury. However, his intense love for boxing did not stop there.
Instead, he devoted himself to training young talented boxers for success.
He managed Mike Tyson, Floyd Patterson, and Jose Torres, which landed them in the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
So, if you are interested in his boxer training legacy or his methods for success in life, then this collection is perfect for you!
Check the complete list below to know more.
Best Cus D’Amato Quotes
1. “Losers are winners who quit. Even if you lose, you still win if you don’t quit.”
2. “A boy comes to me with a spark of interest, I feed the spark, and it becomes a flame. I feed the flame, and it becomes a fire. I feed the fire, and it becomes a roaring blaze.”
3. “You do what I tell you to do, and if it doesn’t work, then you can leave.”
4. “Break your opponent’s will. Constant attack, no let up. Destroy his spirit.”
5. “If you learn to control it, you let it work for you. If you don’t learn to control it, it’ll destroy you and everything around you.”
6. “I believe a man is a professional when he can do what needs to be done no matter how he feels within. An amateur is an amateur in his attitude emotionally. A professional is a professional in the way he thinks and feels and in his ability to execute under the most trying conditions.”
7. “There is no difference between a hero and a coward in what they feel. It’s what they do that makes them different. The hero and the coward feel exactly the same, but you have to have the discipline to do what a hero does and to keep yourself from doing what the coward does.”
8. “People who are born round don’t die square.”
9. “A man who’s thinking or worried about getting hit is not gonna have a good sense of anticipation. He will, in fact, get hit.”
10. “A professional fighter has got to learn to hit and not get hit and at the same time be exciting. That’s what professional boxing is about.”
11. “No matter what anyone says, no matter the excuse or explanation, whatever a person does, in the end, is what he intended to do all along.”
12. “Character is that quality upon which you can depend under pressure and other conditions.”
13. “Every fighter that ever lived had fear. A boy comes to me and tells me that he’s not afraid. If I believed him, I’d say he’s a liar, or there’s something wrong with him. I’d send him to a doctor to find out what the hell’s the matter with him because this is not a normal reaction.”
14. “Boxing is a contest of character and ingenuity. The boxer with more will, determination, desire, and intelligence is always the one who comes out the victor.”
15. “I believe nature’s a lot smarter than anyone thinks. During the course of a man’s life, he develops a lot of pleasures and people he cares about. Then, nature takes them away, one by one. It’s her way of preparing you for death.”
Inspirational Cus D’Amato Quotes
16. “The fact that he is here and doing what he’s doing, and doing as well as he’s doing and improving as he has, gives me the motivation and interest to stay alive. I believe a person dies when they no longer want to live.”
17. “I don’t allow people to intimidate me, for no other reason than to set an example for my boxers.”
18. “It is the mark of a great fighter when he has character plus skill because a fighter with character and skill will often rise and be a better fighter because of this.”
19. “When a person’s interested in something, they’re willing to tolerate any kind of problems that may come up.”
20. “Greatness is not a measure of how great you are but how great others came to be because of you.”
21. “I’m not a creator. What I do is discover and uncover. See, my job is to take the spark and fan it.”
22. “There is no such thing as a natural puncher. There is a natural aptitude for punching, and that is different. Nobody is born the best. You have to practice and train to become the best.”
23. “The ability to do what needs to be done regardless of the pressure and do it with poise, with no reflection of his inner feeling or conflict if it exists, is what makes a professional. It has nothing to do with their knowledge. I’ll show you many amateurs with far superior knowledge and ability than top professionals.”
24. “Boxing is entertainment, so to be successful, a fighter must not only win, but he must win in an exciting manner. He must throw punches with bad intentions.”
25. “When two men step into the ring, one and only one deserves to win. When you step into the ring, you gotta know you deserve to win. You gotta know destiny owes you victory cause you trained harder than your opponent. You sparred harder. You ran farther.”
Cus D’Amato Quotes on Fear
26. “Boxing is a sport of self-control. You must understand fear so you can manipulate it. Fear is like fire. You can make it work for you; it can warm you in the winter, cook your food when you’re hungry, give you light when you’re in the dark, and produce energy. Let it go out of control, and it can hurt you, even kill you. Fear is a friend of exceptional people.”
27. “You can teach better by setting examples than we do by explaining and talking about them.”
28. “I should add that at no time does fear disappear. It’s just as bad in the hundredth fight as it was in the first, except by the time he reaches a hundred fights or long before that, he’s developed enough discipline where he can learn to live with it, which is the object, to learn to live with it.”
29. “The fighter that’s gone into the ring and hasn’t experienced fear is either a liar or a psychopath.”
30. “A fighter has to know fear.”
31. “A person doesn’t realize what’s making him nervous unless he understands why he’s getting scared, which is the natural, normal thing. When he understands it, he accepts it as such. Then it doesn’t become as intimidating, which is the reason why I take the boy step by step until actually, the bell rings to fight.”
32. “People who watch you judge you on what you do, not how you feel.”
33. “Fear is the greatest obstacle to learning in any area, but particularly in boxing. For example, boxing is something you learn through repetition. You do it over and over, and suddenly you’ve got it. However, in the course of trying to learn, if you get hit and get hurt, this makes you cautious, and when you’re cautious, you can’t repeat it, and when you can’t repeat it, it’s going to delay the learning process.”
34. “When they come up to the gym and say I want to be a fighter, the first thing I’d do was talk to them about fear. I would always use the same example of the deer crossing an open field. Upon approaching the clearing, suddenly instinct tells him danger is there, and nature begins the survival process, which involves the body releasing adrenaline into the bloodstream, causing the heart to beat faster and enabling the deer to perform extraordinary feats of agility and strength. It enables the deer to get out of range of the danger, helps him escape to the safety of the forest across the clearing, an example in which fear is your friend.”
35. “Just think how many times a day a person would die if he had no fear. He’d walk in front of cars; he’d die a dozen times a day. Fear is a protective mechanism. By talking to the fighters about fear, I cut the learning time by maybe as much as half, sometimes more, depending on the individual.”
Cus D’Amato Quotes on Believing in Yourself
36. “Believe in yourself. A guy can feel it if you don’t believe in yourself. Set your mind to make yourself do it.”
37. “To see a man beaten not by a better opponent, but by himself is a tragedy.”
38. “When you get to the point where you’re not excited and able, see that’s what you got to tell yourself, completely relax. Be able to see everything that’s going on and sense and anticipate shots, and that can’t happen unless you relax.”
39. “I never teach until I’ve spoken to the fighter. I have to first determine his emotional state, get his background, to find out what I have to do, how many layers I have to keep peeling off so that I get to the core of the person so that he can recognize, as well as I, what is there.”
40. “The man who has the confidence that his ability will not be denied, especially when you know what your ability is, nobody can con you.”
41. “I get them in excellent condition. Knowing how the mind is and the tricks it plays on a person and how an individual will always look to avoid a confrontation with something that is intimidating, I remove all possible excuses they’re going to have before they get in there.”
42. “When two men are fighting, what you’re watching is more a contest of wills than of skills, with the stronger will usually overcoming skill. The skill will prevail only when it is so superior to the other man’s skill that the will is not tested.”
43. “What he doesn’t realize is that they look at him, and they see the same thing in him as he sees in them because, by an exercise of discipline, he also puts on a superficial appearance of confidence. Knowing what he goes through, the very act of climbing into that ring stamps him a person of courage and discipline.”
44. “By getting them in excellent condition, they can’t say when they get tired that they’re not in shape.”
45. “Remember, it’s always good to throw the punch where you can hit him, and he can’t hit you. That’s what the science of boxing is all about.”
Cus D’Amato Quotes on Determination
46. “Though he didn’t have skill, he had that quality of determination, and he just kept coming even though he got hit with some good right hands on the jaw.”
47. “I feel that all boys growing up in the environment that he did would require help, patience, and perhaps understanding cos’ I try to make them feel, and I hope I did, that I understand this kind of life. I grew up in a tough neighborhood myself.”
48. “The thing that bothers me about him is this; too frequently, whether he’s putting it on or not, too frequently he’s been taking solid punches with a consistency that’s bothering me.”
49. “As time goes, you see a fellow get tired in the course of a fight. Note that he gets tired when pressure builds up after he gets hurt or he’s been in some kind of doubtful situation, not being able to control the situation. It only means he’s reached a point where he no longer can stand the pressure. He’s now become dominated because when two people fight, it’s very much like two armies. They seek to impose their will on one another.”
50. “You get used to everything. Even the idea of dying is something a person gets used to, and he accepts it.”
Cus D’Amato Quotes on Life
51. “Emotions, particularly anger, are like fire. They can cook your food and keep you warm, or they can burn your house down.”
52. “There are very few new things in this world, very few. That’s why people that are young if they’re smart try to profit from the experience of an older guy so they won’t have to go through all the pain and suffering. But a certain amount of pain and suffering is good because it makes a person think they’ve learned.”
53. “If he weren’t here, I probably wouldn’t be alive today. Nature is smarter than people think. Little by little, we lose our friends that we care about, and little by little, we lose our interest until finally, we say, ‘What the devil am I doing around here if I have no reason to go on?’”
54. “I never allow my personal feelings to get involved, no matter how much affection I may have for him. And I can honestly say I have a very deep affection for him and admiration, having watched him come from where he was to what he is because I know what it takes to do what he’s done and what he’s doing.”
55. “Many people who have been around boxing all those years never had a champion, certainly a heavyweight champion. For that to happen in one’s lifetime is so improbable. I got Floyd Patterson. Then, here, at the age of 76, I was fortunate to come in contact with this young man who has, in my opinion, all the requirements to be a champion that I believe he’s going to be, maybe the best that ever lived.”
More Cus D’Amato Quotes That You Will Love
56. “I don’t succeed when I make a guy become Champion of the World. I succeed when I make that fellow become Champion of the World and independent of me.”
57. “I know you know how to handle them. I know you have an answer for anything they may try to do for you or would do. So I think the outcome is predictable.”
58. “The punch that knocks a man out is the punch that he doesn’t see.”
59. “I tell them the first time they’re going to fight, the night before they probably won’t sleep. I can’t offer them any consolidation other than the fact that the other guy went through the same thing. When they get down to the fight and enter the dressing-room, especially if they’re in an amateur fight, the room is full of possible opponents because they don’t know who they’re going to fight. Everybody looks calm, confident, and smiling, and all the new boy is aware of is that terrible thump in his chest, and he’s intimidated by their attitude and their confidence.”
60. “The boy can do everything a champion is required to do, and if he does everything that he’s capable of doing, I tell you he may go down as one of the greatest fighters of all time.”
Which Of These Quotes Motivated You To Always Stand Up?
Only strong-willed and brave-hearted people can achieve success and reach their goals. Cus D’Amato trains young people who possess these traits because boxing is discipline. Any sport or path in your life requires self-control and determination.
Similar to how life does not stop beating you up even if you are unprepared. It faces you head-on and will bring you down only to toughen you up.
Hence, people grow and mature whenever they accept that life will always be hard and scary. We should remember that the destination will be harsh, but love will constantly strengthen us. Cus D’Amato teaches us that giving up is never a choice if you want to live and be strong.
What realizations did you have in reading the collection? Do you have more Cus D’Amato quotes to add? Don’t forget to comment down below.
What an inspirational man!!!!!