If you asked my kids to describe me, they'd go through a whole list of words before even thinking about Parkinson's. And honestly, I don't think about it that much either. I talk about it because it's there, but it's not my totality.
Catalog
Michael J Fox
I've learned some exciting things - mostly, that people really want to help each other.
I don't look at life as a battle or as a fight. I don't think I'm scrappy. I'm accepting.
Family is not an important thing, it's everything.
Then I would say be patient with people who are negative, because they're really having a hard time.
If you have doubts about someone, lay on a couple of jokes. If he doesn't find anything funny, your radar should be screaming.
The more I expect, the more unhappy I am going to be. The more I accept, the more serene I am.
Our challenges don't define us. Our actions do.
My notion of spirituality was different than it is now, but even if I'd been the most fundamentalist of believers, I would have assumed that God had better things to do than arbitrarily smite me with shaking palsy.
If you were to rush into this room right now and announce that you had struck a deal - with God, Allah, Buddha, Christ, Krishna, Bill Gates, whomever - in which the ten years since my diagnosis could be magically taken away, traded in for ten more years as the person I was before - I would, without…
It seems to me that the quality of a moment in time is not always a reflection of the moment in and of itself—what happens before and what happens after are often what give it its savor.
After all that I'd been through, after all that I'd learned and all that I'd been given, I was going to do what I had been doing every day for the last few years now: just show up and do the best that I could do with whatever lay in front of me.
What other people think of me is not my business.
Happiness is a decision.
A creative mess is better than idle tidiness.
I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business.
One's dignity may be assaulted, vandalized and cruelly mocked, but it can never be taken away unless it is surrendered.
Frankly, my height or lack thereof never bothered me much. Although there is no doubt that it has contributed to a certain mental toughness. I've made the most of the head start one gains from being underestimated.
Listening to people espouse beliefs different from mine is informative, not threatening, because the only thing that can alter my worldview is a new and undeniable truth.
Do the right thing, and then do the next right thing, and that will lead you to the next right thing after that.