Michael J. Fox Quotes

The more I expect, the more unhappy I am going to be. The more I accept, the more serene I am.

I remember my son wanted to go to bed with his cowboy boots on, and we had this fight for like an hour. Then I realized that the only good reason I had for him not to do it is because I didn't want him to. There was really no other reason. And finally I said, "OK, fine." It was a great victory for me, because I realized it doesn't really matter.

Zoos are becoming facsimiles - or perhaps caricatures - of how animals once were in their natural habitat. If the right policies toward nature were pursued, we would need no zoos at all.

Acceptance doesn't mean resignation; it means understanding that something is what it is and that there's got to be a way through it.

I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence I can reach for; perfection is God's business.

Our challenges don’t define us, our actions do.

The laughs mean more to me than the adoration. If two girls walk up to me and one says 'you're cute', I'll say 'thank you', but I appreciate it much more when the other one says 'you make me laugh so much'.

If you fixate on the worst-case scenario and it actually happens, you’ve lived it twice.

One's dignity may be assaulted, vandalized and cruelly mocked, but cannot be taken away unless it is surrendered.

Family is not an important thing. It's everything.

I like to encourage people to realize that any action is a good action if it's proactive and there is positive intent behind it.

Medical science has proven time and again that when the resources are provided, great progress in the treatment, cure, and prevention of disease can occur.

I'm going to marry a Jewish woman because I like the idea of getting up Sunday morning and going to the deli.

I often say now I don't have any choice whether or not I have Parkinson's, but surrounding that non-choice is a million other choices that I can make.

Pain is temporary, film is forever.

People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.

But the key to our marriage is the capacity to give each other a break. And to realize that it's not how our similarities work together; it's how our differences work together.

The first part of my life was to be an actor and maybe have some success at that. Then [it was time] to find somebody to be in a relationship with and have a life that way. Because of Parkinson's, I had to change: How can I be of service here? Is there something unique to my situation that I can use to help people? I did not have the wherewithal to invent that. It just happened in front of me and had me join in.

My experience is to deal with things through humor.

My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.

With Parkinson's, it's like you're in the middle of the street and you're stuck there in cement shoes and you know a bus is coming at you, but you don't know when. You think you can hear it rumbling, but you have a lot of time to think. And so you just don't live that moment of the bus hitting you until it happens. There's all kinds of room in that space.

Happiness is a decision.

Look at the choices you have, not the choices that have been taken away from you. In them, there are whole worlds of strength and new ways to look at things.

I have no choice about whether or not I have Parkinson's. I have nothing but choices about how I react to it. In those choices, there's freedom to do a lot of things in areas that I wouldn't have otherwise found myself in.

A lot of times, when you have a disability, one of the things you deal with is other people's projections of what your experience is and their fear about it, and not seeing the experience you're having. There's nothing horrifying about it to me. It is what I deal with. It is my reality and my life, but it's not horrible.

The least amount of judging we can do, the better off we are.

I see possibilities in everything. For everything that's taken away, something of greater value has been given.

There's always failure. And there's always disappointment. And there's always loss. But the secret is learning from the loss, and realizing that none of those holes are vacuums.

The moment I understood this - that my Parkinson's was the one thing I wasn't going to change - I started looking at the things I could change, like the way research is funded.

Don't spend a lot of time imagining the worst-case scenario. It rarely goes down as you imagine it will, and if by some fluke it does, you will have lived it twice.

If you allow for the possibilities of something better, you move toward it instinctively.

I urge you to be challenged and inspired by what you do not know.

The purpose that you wish to find in life, like a cure you seek, is not going to fall from the sky. ...I believe purpose is something for which one is responsible; it's not just divinely assigned.

In fact, Parkinson's has made me a better person. A better husband, father and overall human being.

A creative mess is better than idle tidiness.

Whatever the situation, just take it for what it is. You don't have to make it worse or better than it is. It just is what it is. Always deal with the honesty, the truth of what something is, and then you've got all kinds of choices.

Everything is cause and effect. If you don't move, nothing will move with you, and nothing will move toward you.

You've probably read in People that I'm a nice guy - but when the doctor first told me I had Parkinson's, I wanted to kill him.

If you have one foot in yesterday and one foot in tomorrow, you're pissing all over today.

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it saved my ass.

I don't have a set of tenets, but I live an ethical life. I practice a humility that presupposes there's a power greater than myself. And I always believe, don't inflict harm where it's not necessary.

The way life runs through everything, even the tiniest elements of nature - that makes me humble. It's the same humility that causes people at a certain time every day to get on their knees and put their foreheads on the ground in honor of something or someone.

The oldest form of theater is the dinner table.

One of the great things about Parkinson's, in a superficial way, is it relieved me of vanity. I don't worry about what I look like, because it's literally out of my hands. But on a deeper level, it gives you a real humility, because you have to deal every day with the fact that you compromise.

I think the scariest person in the world is the person with no sense of humor.

When life takes away, something of greater value is always given in return.

To be associated with a film that just flat-out makes people happy is such a blessing and a tremendous privilege, and I'll always be grateful for it. People's eyes light up when they talk about it. I've been in Asia, Africa, Europe and even Bhutan; people know the movie there. It's just an amazing thing.

I discovered that I was part of a Parkinson's community with similar experiences and similar questions that I'd been dealing with alone.

I can get sad, I can get frustrated, I can get scared, but I never get depressed - because there's joy in my life.

I happen to be a Parkinson's patient. I'm not fearful of my condition or my future - but if someone is looking in my eyes for fear, then they see their own fear reflected back at them.