Michael J. Fox Quotes
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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.
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My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.
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My wife is Jewish, and therefore, it's my children's birthright to be Jewish.
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Now I feel and I say all the time that vanity is, like, long gone. I'm really free of worrying about what I look like, because it's out of my shaky hands. I don't control it. So why would I waste one second of my life worrying about it?
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No matter how much fame you have, it's not something that belongs to you. If I'm famous, that doesn't belong to me-that belongs to you. If you can't remember who I am, I'm no longer famous.
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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.
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You suffer the blow, but you capitalize on the opportunity left in its wake.
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I can get sad, I can get frustrated, I can get scared, but I never get depressed - because there's joy in my life.
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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.
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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.
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There's a connection that's hard to explain. It's the feeling I get when I see someone shuffle up to meet me, or say something, and I can instantly tell by the cant of their head or by the movement of their arms -- and these are people who aren't even full-blown symptomatic -- that they're one of us. And the look they give me, it's not just gratitude -- I don't care about the gratitude -- but solidarity. And shared optimism. And a resiliency that just makes me think we're doing the right thing, and that this truly is a community.
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I take the medication for myself so I can transact, not for anyone else. But I am aware that it is empowering for people to see what I do and, for the most part, people in the Parkinson's community are just really happy that Parkinson's is getting mentioned, and not in a pitying way.
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When prescribing one of the drugs I take, my doctor warned me of a common side effect: exaggerated, intensely vivid dreams. To be honest, I've never really noticed the difference. I've always dreamt big.
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I don't feel a yearning or a sense of missed opportunities. I don't have many regrets. So that's a nice feeling. To have no regrets and still have enough sense of adventure to take on risk.
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To be brutally honest, for much of that time, I was the only person in the world with Parkinson's. Of course, I mean that in the abstract. I had become acutely aware of people around me who appears to have the symptoms of Parkinson's disease, but as long as they didn't identify with me, I was in no rush to identify with them. My situation allowed, if not complete denial, at least a thick padding of insulation.
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Almost instantly [after my announcement of Parkinson's], I saw the first couple of days the coverage was about, you know, "Fox's Parkinson's, blah, blah, blah." Then, two days after that, I saw the coverage turn. It started to become, "Can young people get Parkinson's?" All of a sudden, the conversation turned to become about that. And that was one of the first eye-opening things.
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I always felt that I came up short in the education department, but I've come to the conclusion that we all get an education.
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Since I'm not sure of the address to which to send my gratitude, I put it out there in everything I do.
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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.
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Discipline is just doing the same thing the right way whether anyone's watching or not.
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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.
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When I was 20, I would have taken a bullet in the head to never have to be 35.
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Life delivered me a catastrophe, but I found a richness of soul.
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I still play hockey every now and then, and I still golf. But my biggest exercise is walking my big dog in the park every day.
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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.
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The least amount of judging we can do, the better off we are.
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I truly believe that we have infinite levels of power that we don't even know are available to us.
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The 'Rescue Me' gig was a unique opportunity to play a character - a misanthropic, angry guy - who was so contrary to how people think of me.
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It’s all about control. Control is illusory. No matter what university you go to, no matter what degree you hold, if your goal is to become master of your own destiny, you have more to learn. Parkinson’s is a perfect metaphor for lack of control. Every unwanted movement in my hand or arm, every twitch that I cannot anticipate or arrest, is a reminder that even in the domain of my own being, I am not calling the shots. I tried to exert control by drinking myself to a place of indifference, which just exacerbated the sense of miserable hopelessness.
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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'.
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