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I Don't Burden Myself Too Much With Others' Expectations - Or Even My Own Expectations. I Think Your Happiness Grows In Direct Proportion To Your Acceptance, And In Inverse Proportion To Your Expectations. It's Just A Matter Of Putting One Foot In Front Of The Other - Or Doing The Next Right Thing, So To Speak.

-Michael J. Fox

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I Don't Burden Myself

Michael J. Fox

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I Don't Burden Myself Too Much With Others' Expectations - Or Even My Own Expectations. I Think Your Happiness Grows In Direct Proportion To Your Acceptance, And In Inverse Proportion To Your Expectations. It's Just A Matter Of Putting One Foot In Front Of The Other - Or Doing The Next Right Thing, So To Speak.

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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.

You Know What I Want? The Answer Is, I Truly Don't Know What I Want. I Don't Want To Do A Television Series. I Want To Do Dramas As Well As Comedies, But I Have No Idea What Kind Or In What Order. Just Give Me The Chance At Them.

Our Challenges Don’t Define Us, Our Actions Do.

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.

Pay Attention To What's Happening Around You. Read The Book Before You See The Movie. Remember, Though You, Alone, Are Responsible For Your Own Happiness, Its Still Okay To Feel Responsible For Someone Else's. Live And To Learn.

I Don't Subscribe To Any Particular Doctrine Or Ideology. I Just Think That There's Kind Of A Good And Bad, The Good Being Life In Its Purest, Happiest Form, And The Other Being The Darker Side Of Existence.

After A Year Or So I Really Thought I Was Howard Hughes. Here I Was At Eighteen Years Old, Getting All These Checks.

Eighteen Years Old

I Got Sick Of Turning On The Tv And Seeing My Face.

I Have A Remarkably Normal Life.

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.

I Don't Want People To Kick My Ass, I Just Want To Get To A Point Where They Can't Kick It.

I Urge You To Be Challenged And Inspired By What You Do Not Know.

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 Don't Keep Up With It All. But Taylor Swift Writes Songs About Everybody She Goes Out With, Right? What A Way To Build A Career.

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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.

As Much As Parkinson's Is About Movement, The End Stage Is Being Frozen. So The More I Let That Happen, The More I'm Gonna Be Stuck Within That And Unable To Reverse It.

'why Do You Think It Is...', I Asked Dr. Cook ... 'that Brain Surgery, Above All Else-even Rocket Science-gets Singled Out As The Most Challenging Of Human Feats, The One Demanding The Utmost Of Human Intelligence?' [dr. Cook Answered,] 'no Margin For Error.'

I Don't Look At Myself As A Leader. I Do Look At Myself As Part Of A Community.

Life Is The Power That's Greater Than I Can Ever Comprehend. The Way Life Runs Through Everything, Even The Tiniest Elements Of Nature - That Makes Me Humble.

You Know What's Cool? My Kids Think I'm Ordinary.

Turning Fully Toward The Glass, I Consider What I See. This Reflected Version Of Myself, Wet, Shaking, Rumpled, Pinched, And Slightly Stoop, Would Be Alarming Were It Not For The Self-satisfied Expression Pasted Across My Face. I Would Ask The Obvious Question, 'what Are You Smiling About?' But I Already Know The Answer: 'it Just Gets Better From Here.'

I Am Careful Not To Confuse Excellence With Perfection. Excellence I Can Reach For; Perfection Is God's Business.

Inspirational Life

I Don't Think [parkinson's] Is Gothic Nastiness. There's Nothing On The Surface That's Horrible About Someone With A Shaky Hand. There's Nothing Horrible About Someone In Their Life Saying, "god, I'm Really Tired Of This Shaky Hand Thing" And Me Saying, "me, Too." That's Our Reality. We Have No Control Over It.

I Think There's A God And I Know It's Not Me.

If Spirituality Is That You're Humble In The Face Of Forces Greater Than You And You Believe Those Forces Are More Inclined Toward Being Good Than Being Bad, Then I'm A Spiritual Person.

Disease Is A Non-partisan Problems That Requires A Non-partisan Solution.

I Think The Scariest Person In The World Is The Person With No Sense Of Humor.

So I Never Spend A Lot Of Time Analyzing Why People Respond To My Work. But I Think That It's Just The Joy, A Passion For Life, That I Think Has Always Been In My Characters. Beyond That, I'm Just Grateful For It.

Pity Is A Benign Form Of Abuse.

You Suffer The Blow, But You Capitalize On The Opportunity Left In Its Wake.

Ironic That In Order To Do My Life's Work, I Had To Quit My Day Job.

When I Was Younger, I Was Always Described As Happy-go-lucky. Then I Drank And I Partied - Did All That Stuff That Might Tell You Maybe There Was A Little Bit Of Untruth In That [description]. Now, The Surprising Thing Is That When I Say Stuff, I Actually Mean It. I Don't Have To Do The Work Of Trying To Formulate My Point Of View. It Just Is. And It's Surprising How Much I Love Life. I Just Really Have A Good Time.

The Biggest Gift On Father's Day Is If I Can Be With All My Kids.

Happiness Is A Decision.

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.

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.

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.

I Definitely Believe In A Higher Power.

My Tattoo Is That I Don't Have A Tattoo.

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If You Fixate On The Worst-case Scenario And It Actually Happens, You’ve Lived It Twice.

Worst Case Scenario

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Family Is Not An Important Thing. It's Everything.

Vocabulary Words

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Something Better

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Worst Case Scenario

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Life Delivered Me A Catastrophe, But I Found A Richness Of Soul.

Richness Of Life

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.

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I Think I Benefited From Being Equal Parts Ambitious And Curious. And Of The Two, Curiosity Has Served Me Best.

Everything Is Cause And Effect. If You Don't Move, Nothing Will Move With You, And Nothing Will Move Toward You.

Cause And Effect

When I Was Younger, I Was Always Described As Happy-go-lucky.

If You Want To Be An Agent Of Change, It Starts With You And What You're Made Of.

I Have So Many Things That I Say To My Kids, I Just Drive Them Crazy.

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.

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.

Worst Case Scenario

There Are No Moments You Have Frozen In Amber. It's Moving, It's Changing, So Appreciate What's Good About Right Now And Be Ready For What's Next.

The Only Thing Worse Than An Opportunity You Don't Deserve Is Blowing An Opportunity.

The Way I Look At Life, And The Way I Look At The Reality Of Parkinson's, Is That Sometimes It's Frustrating And Sometimes It's Funny. I Need To Look At It That Way, And I Think Other People Will Look At It That Way.

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.

I Wait For Good Opportunities To Come Up To Do Stuff; I'm Not Seeking Things. I'm Quite Busy In The Meantime, But If The Right Thing Came Up, I Would Be Happy To Do It.

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.

When Life Takes Away, Something Of Greater Value Is Always Given In Return.

My Whole Life, Meeting People Is Like A Blind Date, Because I Feel Like They've Already Seen The Video On Me.

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.

Everybody In The World Knew I Was Before I Knew Who I Was.

My Happiness Grows In Direct Proportion To My Acceptance, And In Inverse Proportion To My Expectations.

If You Have Doubts About Someone, Lay On A Couple Of Jokes. If He Doesn't Find Anything Funny, Your Radar Should Be Screaming. Then I Would Say Be Patient With People Who Are Negative, Because They're Really Having A Hard Time.

Life Is What You Put Into It And How Much You Take Out Of It. You Put In More Than Is Expected, And You Take Out Less Than You Want.

The Least Amount Of Judging We Can Do, The Better Off We Are.

I Have Now Is Whenever My Kids Say, "can You Look At This?" Or "can I Ask You Something?" Or "can You Come Here For A Minute?" No Matter What I Am Doing, I Say Yes Instead Of Saying, "just A Sec." They Never Abuse The Privilege, And I Never Once Regretted It. What They Took Me Away To Do Was Never Less Important Than What I Was Doing Already.

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.

As For My Own Truncated Secondary Education, My Head Was In The Clouds As My Mom Would Say, Or If You Asked My Father, Up My Ass.

I Think There's A God And I Know It's Not Me. I Don't Have A Set Of Tenets, But I Live An Ethical Life.

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.

If I Were Overweight Because I Ate Too Much, I Would Have Far More Of A Complex. I Would Know If I Just Stopped Eating And Showed A Little Discipline I Would Be Thin. But There's Not A Hell Of A Lot I Can Do About Being Short. You Just Gotta Run With It.

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.

As With Any Turning Point Or Instance When A New Road Is Chosen And An Old One Forsaken, There Are Consequences.

I Always Feel Very Connected To Canada. My Reference For Everything Is My Canadian Background, My Life In Canada. Particularly On This Issue Of Refugee Immigration: I Couldn't Be Prouder Of Canada.

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'.

It Is Ironic That In The Same Year We Celebrate The 50th Anniversary Of The Discovery Of Dna, Some Would Have Us Ban Certain Forms Of Dna Medical Research. Restricting Medical Research Has Very Real Human Consequences, Measured In Loss Of Life And Tremendous Suffering For Patients And Their Families.

I Can't Be Smug, Because I Know That You Can Lose Anything At Any Point. And I Can't Be Angry, Because I Haven't Lost It.

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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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've Never Gotten Up To See Something One Of My Kids Wanted To Show Me And Not Been Rewarded.

In Terms Of What Happened Over That Hiatus That I Took, I Just Rested. I Spent That Time With My Family, During Their Really Formative Years, And Enjoyed That, And I Messed With Pills And New Medications That Help Me To Deal With Dyskinesia And Some Other Things I Was Struggling With, That I Don't Have As Much Now Because Of Medication To Counter The Side Effects. So, It Just Seemed Like The Right Time To Do It.

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.

Curiosity May Have Killed The Cat, But It Saved My Ass.

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.

My Wife Is Jewish, And Therefore, It's My Children's Birthright To Be Jewish.

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.

Optimism Is A Cure For Many Things.

I'm A Dad, I'm A Husband, I'm An Activist, I'm A Writer And I'm Just A Student Of The World.

I Can Say, "i Don't Have Anything I Regret!" But I Can Also Say, "i Can Go Forward In My Life The Way It Is And I Don't Think I'll Accrue Any Future Regrets."

I Don't Set A Whole Lot Of Goals. It Smacks A Little Bit Of Will To Me, And I Find That Will Is Not The Way To Go For Me.

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.

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.

Lance Armstrong Showed Up, And I Started Talking To Him; I Saw All These People With Cancer Who Followed Him To Paris For The Tour De France, And I Saw The Difference He Was Making In Their Lives. That Put It Together For Me...having It Be Not So Much About Me, But [my Being] A Vehicle For It.

So What I Say About Tracy Is This: Tracy's Big Challenge Is Not Having A Parkinson's Patient For A Husband. It's Having Me For A Husband. I Happen To Be A Parkinson's Patient.

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.

If You Have One Foot In Yesterday And One Foot In Tomorrow, You're Pissing All Over Today.

In My 50s I'll Be Dancing At My Children's Weddings.

When I Was 20, I Would Have Taken A Bullet In The Head To Never Have To Be 35.

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.

They Did Something Once That Slurred My Speech, And I Thought, "oh, Man, You're Messing With My Brain. It's Freaking Me Out."

Acceptance Is The Key To Everything.

Life Is The Power That's Greater Than I Can Ever Comprehend.

I Truly Believe That We Have Infinite Levels Of Power That We Don't Even Know Are Available To Us.

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.

My Age Makes Me Think How Valuable Life Is. How Bad Is Something Like Parkinson's In Relation To Not Having Life At All?

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 A Moment's Hesitation, Tell You To Take A Hike.

Control Is Illusory. No Matter What University You Go To, No Matter What Degree You Hold, If Your Goal Is To Becomes Master Of Your Own Destiny, You Have More To Learn.

My Natural State Is One That's Affected By The Shortage Of Dopamine Production In My Brain. So My Natural State Is To Be Halting And At Times Tremulous And Kind Of Just Physically Disturbed. I Mean, That's My Natural State, Given The Situation In My Brain. But I'm Always As Happy Either Way. And So When It Comes To Me, Body Language Lies.

You Know You're Old When You Get A Lifetime Achievement Award. It's A Message You've Been Around Too Long.

The Secret To A Good Marriage, As Far As I Am Concerned, Is A Joke I Make: Keep The Fights Clean And The Sex Dirty.

There Are Things I've Always Wanted To Do. Things I May Not Be Able To Do, But I Never Really Ruled Them Out - Like Running A Marathon. It's All A Matter Of Timing For Me. I Suppose I Could Probably Do It If I Planned It Out Right With Medication. I Don't Set A Whole Lot Of Goals. It Smacks A Little Bit Of Will To Me, And I Find That Will Is Not The Way To Go For Me.

I Don't Burden Myself Too Much With Others' Expectations - Or Even My Own Expectations. I Think Your Happiness Grows In Direct Proportion To Your Acceptance, And In Inverse Proportion To Your Expectations. It's Just A Matter Of Putting One Foot In Front Of The Other - Or Doing The Next Right Thing, So To Speak.

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