Michael J. Fox
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.Collection: Learning
I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence I can reach for; perfection is God's business.Collection: God
No matter how much money you have, you can lose it.Collection: Money
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.Collection: Freedom
I worked very hard on those movies but there was some creative connection that wasn't being made.Collection: Movies
No, I got a GED in my 30s. My kids know that I never stop learning, and they know I love reading. I have books overflowing everywhere. I am current on today's events and I read the paper every day, and we talk about it, so they see that appetite.Collection: Learning
What other people think about me is not my business.Collection: Business
I'm going to marry a Jewish woman because I like the idea of getting up Sunday morning and going to the deli.Collection: Morning
I think the scariest person in the world is the person with no sense of humor.Collection: Humor
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.Collection: Medical
My view of life is colored by humor and looking at the best in any situation.Collection: Humor
Family is not an important thing. It's everything.Collection: Family
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.Collection: Positive
My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.Collection: Happiness
Discipline is just doing the same thing the right way whether anyone's watching or not.
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.
The least amount of judging we can do, the better off we are.
Pain is temporary, film is forever.
The more I expect, the more unhappy I am going to be. The more I accept, the more serene I am.
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.
That's the way I look at things - if you focus on the worst case scenario and it happens, you've lived it twice. It sounds like Pollyanna-ish tripe but I'm telling you - it works for me.
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.
The oldest form of theater is the dinner table. It's got five or six people, new show every night, same players. Good ensemble; the people have worked together a lot.
I see possibilities in everything. For everything that's taken away, something of greater value has been given.
The only thing worse than an opportunity you don't deserve is blowing an opportunity.
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.
One's dignity may be assaulted, vandalized and cruelly mocked, but cannot be taken away unless it is surrendered.
I definitely believe in a higher power.
I truly believe that we have infinite levels of power that we don't even know are available to us.
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.
Humility is always a good thing. It's always a good thing to be humbled by circumstances so you can then come from a sincere place to try to deal with them.
I mean, I enjoy my work as an actor. But to make a difference in people's lives through advocacy and through supporting research - that's the kind of privilege that few people will get, and it's certainly bigger than being on TV every Thursday for half an hour.
When you're a short actor you stand on apple boxes, you walk on a ramp. When you're a short star everybody else walks in a ditch.
Life delivered me a catastrophe, but I found a richness of soul.
I don't have any affirmations, I don't have any of that stuff. My natural state is to look at things as possibilities and as opportunities.
Always be available to your kids. Because if you say, 'Give me five minutes, give me ten minutes,' it'll be 15, it'll be 20. And then when you get there, the shine will have worn off whatever it is they wanted to share with you.
I didn't just want to be a poster boy and sign on to publicize somebody else's method of operations. If I was going to put myself out there, I wanted to make sure that it was to an end. So I got involved with this congressional hearing about Parkinson's being underfunded.
My wife is Jewish, and therefore, it's my children's birthright to be Jewish.
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.
Pity is just another form of abuse.
In fact, Parkinson's has made me a better person. A better husband, father and overall human being.
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.
Pity is a benign form of abuse.
The thing that brings people to wail at a wall, or face Mecca, or to go to church, is a search for that feeling of purity.
I wouldn't have wanted to miss the opportunity to make those three films that didn't do well. They were really important to me, and the things I learned doing them were important to me.
Vanity's really overrated. When I was 20, teenage girls had my picture on the wall... I don't need to be pretty anymore. I just am who I am.
Just as Parkinson's isn't a big topic of conversation in my house, neither is my career.
I'm also very proud to be a part of a trilogy of films that, if they do nothing else, allow people to check their problems at the door, sit down and have a good time.
I don't look at myself as a leader. I do look at myself as part of a community.
I've learned some exciting things - mostly, that people really want to help each other; and that, if you can lay out a vision for them - and that vision is sincere and genuine - they'll get interested.