In Florida I was illiterate, Boxing Authority didn't want me, then they had a special psychiatrist to come to Kentucky, they checked and they didn't want me. But as soon as my name was Mohammed Ali, as soon as I announced I was a Muslim, then all of a sudden I became smart.
I feel at some point that the farm state politics will overwhelm the Florida politics.
There were times when I was broke, when I was down in Florida and I had to go to cocktail parties for 500 bucks - to see the guy that used to be in pictures. I'm not ashamed of that. I've never done anything that I was ashamed of. I've done a lot of things I didn't mean to do.
I've been down in Florida since 1979. When you're born in Nebraska you really can't explain it.
I was born and raised here [in Florida], so I still have tremendous affection for the state - especially the few wild places that haven't disappeared under concrete. What's left is still worth fighting for, and that's why I stay.
Late February, and the air's so balmy snowdrops and crocuses might be fooled into early blooming. Then, the inevitable blizzard will come, blighting our harbingers of spring, and the numbed yards will go back undercover. In Florida, it's strawberry season- shortcake, waffles, berries and cream will be penciled on the coffeeshop menus.
I live in Florida and people are crazy here. And I say that lovingly.
I taped my first series for PBS in 1982 at WJCT-TV in Jacksonville, Florida. The show, called 'Everyday Cooking with Jacques Pepin,' was about saving time and money in the kitchen - and it was a celebration of simple and unpretentious food.
A prosthetic leg with a Willie Nelson bumper sticker washed ashore on the beach, which meant it was Florida. Then it got weird.
It is my plan to create a city that is direct and simple. . . To leave out all that is ugly, to eliminate the unnecessary, and to give Florida and the nation a resort city as perfect as study and ideals can make it.
I love Florida. I love the beach. I love the sound of the crashing surfers against the rocks.
We have to remember that literally within months after Castro's taking office the planes from Florida were beginning to bomb Cuba. Within a year, the Eisenhower administration secretly, but formally, decided to overthrow the government. Then came the Bay of Pigs invasion. The Kennedy administration was furious about the failure of the invasion and immediately launched a major terrorist war and economic war that got harsher through the years. Under these conditions it is kind of amazing that Cuba survived.
Now, Florida laws do not regulate assault weapons or large capacity ammunition magazines. Doesn't even require a permit to purchase a gun or register it or be licensed. So if we don't have action on the federal level that would have set off the alert, it will be difficult to interrupt the plans of someone like this who clearly, by the time he went and purchased these weapons.
My excuse for everything is that I grew up in Florida.
In a new campaign ad, Jeb Bush referenced 'The Godfather' and said his nickname used to be 'Veto Corleone' because he vetoed so many bills in Florida. When you're the third person in your family to run for president, maybe you shouldn't bring up a movie trilogy where the third one was clearly the worst.
Since the nineteen-fifties, rural Florida has marketed itself to Northerners and Midwesterners as an unexplored paradise of citrus and mermaids.
Here in Florida, we have something special we never enjoyed at Disneyland: the blessing of size. There's enough land here to hold all of the ideas and plans we can possibly imagine.
I followed the law. Before God, before the law, before the people of the state of Florida who elected me, I know that I followed the law.
If you want to be angry at Gore, be angry at him for not fighting harder in Florida.
I remember the first sermon I ever preached. I had four sermons. I preached them, all four in ten minutes. And that was the beginning, in a place called Bostwick, Florida, in northern Florida, in a little tiny church, and on a cold night, about 40 people. And I was so nervous.