Dale Earnhardt Jr. Quotes

I came here from Jamaica as a kid and didn't go to school, really, never had a great education. I was a little bit bad on the street, running around, doing this, doing that, and always getting into trouble. I was completely written off, so boxing has definitely saved my life.

I was a punk. I think that's why I'm such a good person now, because I was such a bad guy then.

Boxing gave me the discipline and took me away from the streets and away from the corners. It changed my life, you know. Boxing dragging me away from all the bad potential I had.

Redemption means you just make a change in your life and you try to do right, versus what you were doing, which was wrong. So I think a lot of people get hooked on drugs and when they get over that addiction they go out and they try to talk to kids and they try to work in rehab centers.

I was an opportunist and got away with things because I was very young, but I went to prison and came out and remade my life.

I like to think that even if we make some really bad choices and go down some bad paths, we'll eventually emerge from it.

My whole story is just about me having a second chance.

For me, music was the only reason I went to school. I was kind of a street kid, in a lot of trouble committing crimes and stuff. Music gave me something to focus on.

There is a very good chance I could have been a screw-up for the rest of my life.

There were a lot of moments in my life where I could have died or I could have ended up serving 20 years to life in prison. I overcame those things, those obstacles, because I listened and I obeyed that higher power that was speaking to me at the crucial moments in my life when it really counted.

My mom had struggles. My dad had struggles. He raised me as a single parent. I rebelled and almost quit amateur boxing, but my faith in God had a lot to do with me slowly getting my life together.

Boxing saved my life. There were a lot of gangs and I was hanging around with the wrong people.

I was in jail a couple of times, and I was probably heading back there for a long time. But martial arts saved my life and some of the choices I made with it.

It was a sort of weird, troubled road into acting because I had been a bit naughty in school until I did my Highers, and then I was like, 'Oh, I think I'm going to apply myself and surprise everyone.'

All I could do was try to build a new life and find a way somehow to repair some of the damage. People had every reason to doubt my sincerity, but most of them didn't. And - given my history, it was more than I could've hoped for - forgiveness and the benefit of the doubt. It still amazes me.

I was at Watford and got a knock-back when I was 16 and didn't get a YTS contract. They said I could find another club or go in and train three times a week after school. I'd been there since I was 10, so I got my head down and proved them wrong. Within a year, they had signed me up, and I haven't looked back.

It wasn't until the birth of my daughter that I realised I had to get it together. I had my second chance in life to do what I'm doing, which is inspire people to not give up.

Nothing in your life is beyond redemption.

It took me three and a half years to go from being sentenced in federal court to going to the Oscars.

Nobody succeeds on their own. Someone has to be there to show them the way, and if you give that experience to a person on the street - a gang member, a prisoner - he might succeed. That's how it was for me.

People had lost faith in me in Baltimore, and rightfully so. I knew that was not the guy I was.

I escaped my destiny. The odds were that I would end up in prison, but I didn't.

America loves a good comeback story!

I don't know if me and my dad have necessarily touched on this because we talk about Reid but not a lot. But me wrestling, I think, ultimately saved my dad's career and not only saved my life but definitely put a whole other chapter that no one saw coming because it could've been rock bottom after my brother passed away.

A lot of fighters are counted out after a loss, and it's really what you do afterward that offers an explanation to your career.