Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Pele is incomparable.
I am not White Pele. I am simply Zico.
Pele was the most complete player I've ever seen.
If I'd been born ugly, you'd never have heard of Pele.
Others are others, Pele is Pele, he is totally different.
Everything you can imagine from a player, Pele has done it.
It's difficult to talk about Pele because I didn't see him.
I don't know why everyone refers to me as White Pele. I don't like it.
Pele and Maradona won games but they had the help of their team-mates.
Pele doesn't die. Pele will never die. Pele is going to go on for ever.
Pele has all the qualities and characteristic that a football player has to have.
Wherever you go, there are three icons that everyone knows: Jesus Christ, Pele and Coca-Cola.
Edson is the person that supports Pele. Edson is the base. Pele just comes and adds the face.
Maradona is among the best five players I've ever seen: Garrincha, Pele, Diego, Cruijff and Beckenbauer.
Anybody who wants to compare Pele to any other athlete... do you know what I do? I hear but I don't listen.
Ayrton Senna is the Pele of F1 for me. He is the number one for us Brazilians so he left a huge impact on me.
The history of Brazil goes from Pele to Garrincha, Didi, Tostao, Gerson, then to all of us who followed them.
I can't be compared to Pele. I need to do so much more to be compared to Pele. Pele is fantastic. And he's unique.
I never saw Pele, but I watched Maradona, for seven years I saw every game. He's not one of the best, he's the best.
There would be no debate about who was the best footballer the world had ever seen - me or Pele. Everyone would say me.
I don't think Pele was the ultimate hero for our generation, he is the ultimate hero of every generation of Brazilians.
The world's best when I was growing up was Pele and he would have been a great player now, too, but Messi surpasses him.
My father gave me some advice when I was very young - whatever someone tells you in the future, don't forget Pele is the best.
Obviously, I wasn't born when Pele was playing at World Cups, but I have watched plenty of videos, both of him and other great players.
I have dreamed of Brazil all my life. As a child, I had videos of Brazil, of their World Cup wins, of Pele, and of all the big players.
I have always worn the No.10 shirt when I played at lower levels and, obviously, my reference point was always Pele and then Ronaldinho.
Unfortunately, I never saw Pele play. What I know of him is through my grandfather, my dad's dad, who used to talk to me and tell me about how he played.
The first World Cup I followed was Sweden 1958. I watched the games on TV. Brazil won that World Cup by defeating Sweden 5-2 in the Final and Pele scored twice.
That save from Pele's header was the best I ever made. I didn't have any idea how famous it would become - to start with, I didn't even realise I'd made it at all.
My favorite television show of all time is 'Hill Street Blues.' I think it's the show that is to television what Pele was to football or Muhammad Ali was to boxing.
There are people you can say you have seen play, such as Pele or Maradona. But Messi is unique, out on his own, and is going to make history. I can say I saw Messi play.
Human beings of today are more fragile, whereas people born in wartime, during the Second World War, eventually became the great players like Pele. They were fantastic players.
There were very few TV sets when I grew up... We could not see matches and did not know too many players. Only Pele was a household name and he was the one most children idolised.
The African greats who were playing when I was growing up inspired me - players like George Weah, Abedi Pele, Tony Yeboah, Kalusha Bwalya, and all the others who made Africa proud.
Unless your kid is Pele Jr., they're not going to be able to feed themselves from soccer. If your kid knows how to play soccer, but not make dinner, you have done them a disservice.
I was really proud that I was named after Thomas Edison and wanted to be called Edson. I thought Pele sounded horrible. It was a rubbish name. Edson sounded so much more serious and important.
I had seen the ethos of rugby, and I was very much an admirer. For us, it's a beautiful sport, what I guess what Pele called soccer in Brazil. It's so simple; it's easy to understand. You can play five on five or 15 on 15.
Tactically, technically, physically, mentally he was the best. A lot of things that I learnt was from Pele's sticker albums: how to head, how to shoot the ball. It was like a step-by-step guide. I learnt from Pele as a kid.
Over the years I've learnt to live with two persons in my heart. One is Edson, who has fun with his friends and family; the other is the football player Pele. I didn't want the name. 'Pele' sounds like baby-talk in Portuguese.
I think Cristiano and Lionel Messi are two of the best players in the history of the game. Are they better than Pele or Diego Maradona? They are at the top, but I think it is difficult in football to say who is first or second or third.
I wasn't like other boys. At any rate, I wasn't like my three elder brothers: they excelled at football and they were like other boys, going up to bed each night hugging annuals filled with stories about the glories of Pele and Danny McGrain.
There was one player who was better than Pele. It was Garrincha. He had one leg crooked, the other one straight, normal. How did he do all those things with such difficulties? He was a paralytic! And the way he played! Much better than us all!
When God built Pele, he put everything that a player needs in him. He knew how to shoot, how to dribble, how to head, be physical. He had everything that a football player needs to have. It's difficult for someone to achieve what he has in football.
I have seen some great players doing wonderful things, but being so decisive for so long over 12 or 14 years as a professional, I think no player, maybe only Pele in his time, has shown that level. He shows it in every game. I don't know how many hat-tricks he's had.
Ever since Pele's extraordinary talents blessed the world of football, black footballers have been accepted in the pantheon of the greats. But to achieve commercial recognition is somewhat different: it requires a form of adulation that also spells identification and role model.
I wanted to be a soccer player, and I became the best of the best, the number one, better than Maradona, better than Pele, and even better than Messi - but only at night, nighttime, during my dreams. When I wake up, I realized that I have wooden legs and that I'm doomed to be a writer.
When I was a kid, my big hero was the number 10 of Flamengo and not the number 10 of Santos. His name was Dida. We didn't have much knowledge about the championship in Sao Paolo or in the south of Brazil. We just knew about the championship in Rio because I am from there. But Pele played for the national team and was a hero.
Brazil is a country I hold very dearly. I've got followers there who I've been interacting with for years, as well as fellow artists like Ivete Sangalo, and it also has huge figures like Pele. I'd love to go to that World Cup - I'm not sure in what capacity, but I'll definitely be there. I know that nobody wants to miss it, least of all me.
Pele featured in the Brazilophile imaginary as the a figure of non-utile excess, a carefree artist in the Nietzschean sense, indifferent to the narrow teleology of winning matches... check the way that most of the endlessly replayed footage we see of Pele is not of him scoring goals, but audaciously missing chances contrived by force of wit.