Michael J. Fox > Quotes

“One's dignity may be assaulted, vandalized and cruelly mocked, but it can never be taken away unless it is surrendered.”
― Michael J. Fox

“I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business.”
― Michael J. Fox

“My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.”
― Michael J. Fox

“Family is not an important thing, it's everything.”
― Michael J. Fox

“A creative mess is better than idle tidiness.”
― Michael J. Fox

“What other people think of me is not my business.”
― Michael J. Fox

“Happiness is a decision.”
― Michael J. Fox

“When life takes away, something of greater value is always given in return.”
― Michael J. Fox

“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.”
― Michael J. Fox

“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.”
― Michael J. Fox, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future...

“If you don't take the time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”
― Michael J. Fox

“Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it saved my ass.”
― Michael J Fox

“I think I benefited from being equal parts ambitious and curious. And of the two, curiosity has served me best.”
― Michael J Fox

“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.”
― Michael J. Fox, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future...: Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned

“Optimism is a cure for many things.”
― Michael J. Fox

“It may seem hard to believe, but it's catastrophe that offers the most promise for an even richer life. This is the gateway to the good stuff. In other words, you never truly know which way the wind is blowing until the shit hits the fan.”
― Michael J Fox

“If you have one foot in yesterday and one foot in tomorrow, you're pissing all over today.”
― Michael J. Fox, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future...

“If you're lucky, in some point in the future when you're in need of guidance or perhaps moral support, you may cross paths with a suitable mentor. Even luckier, you'll realize you had one in your life all along and you'll gain a new appreciation for how you benefited from that relationship. The luckiest relationship of all, of course, is a combination of the two. You've had help all along, and as the path widens or narrows, whatever the case may be, new and powerful influences will enter your life and aid your progress. In my experience, a mentor doesn't necessarily tell you what to do, but more importantly: tells you what they did or might do, then trusts you to draw your own conclusions and act accordingly. If you succeed, they'll take one step back and if you fail, they'll take one step closer. Whatever it is they teach you, pass it on.”
― Michael J. Fox, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future...

“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.”
― Michael J. Fox, Lucky Man

“Life is good, and there's no reason to think it won't be--right up until the moment when everything explodes into a fireball of tiny, unrecognizable fragments, or it all goes skidding sideways, through the guardrail, over the embankment, and down the mountain. This will happen (and probably more than once).”
― Michael J Fox

“You suffer the blow, but you capitalize on the opportunity left in its wake.”
― Michael J. Fox, Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist

“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.”
― Michael J. Fox, Lucky Man

“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.”
― Michael J Fox

“I have no argument with those who see in organized religion a template or an imperative to live life according to a prescribed set of beliefs. Just give others the room, within the laws of civil society, to believe or not believe whatever they like.”
― Michael J. Fox, Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist

“The only thing that separates any one of us from excellence is fear and the opposite of fear is faith. I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence I can reach for, perfection is God’s business.”
― Michael J. Fox

“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.”
― Michael J. Fox

“Carry on. If you’re going to do something, just do it.”
― Michael J. Fox, No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality

“With gratitude, optimism becomes sustainable.”
― Michael J Fox, No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality

“Chris[topher] Reeve wisely parsed the difference between optimism and hope. Unlike optimism, he said, 'Hope is the product of knowledge and the projection of where the knowledge can take us.”
― Michael J. Fox, Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist

“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.”
― Michael J. Fox, Lucky Man