Parkinsons Quotes

This kind of pragmatism has become a hallmark of our psychological culture. In the mid-1990s, I described how it was commonplace for people to "cycle through" different ideas of the human mind as (to name only a few images) mechanism, spirit, chemistry, and vessel for the soul.14 These days, the cycling through intensifies. We are in much more direct contact with the machine side of mind. People are fitted with a computer chip to help with Parkinson's. They learn to see their minds as program and hardware. They take antidepressants prescribed by their psychotherapists, confident that the biochemical and oedipal self can be treated in one room. They look for signs of emotion in a brain scan. Old jokes about couples needing "chemistry" turn out not to be jokes at all. ~ Sherry Turkle

Stem cell research is the key to developing cures for degenerative conditions like Parkinson's and motor neuron disease from which I and many others suffer. The fact that the cells may come from embryos is not an objection, because the embryos are going to die anyway. ~ Stephen Hawking

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

Practically every day, there is a story in the newspapers about a new breakthrough drug on Parkinson's. ~ Mort Kondracke

As a practicing neurologist, I can tell you first hand that working with Parkinson's patients offers clinical challenges. But from an emotional perspective, this disease can border on overwhelming. ~ David Perlmutter

The rhythm of music is very, very important for people with Parkinson's. But it's also very important with other sorts of patients, such as patients with Tourette's syndrome. Music helps them bring their impulses and tics under control. There is even a whole percussion orchestra made up exclusively of Tourette's patients. ~ Oliver Sacks

I regard music therapy as a tool of great power in many neurological disorders
Parkinson's and Alzheimer's
because of its unique capacity to organize or reorganize cerebral function when it has been damaged. ~ Oliver Sacks

Parkinson's is very hard to diagnose. So when I finally went to a neurologist, and he said, 'Oh, you have Parkinson's disease,' I was completely shocked. ~ Linda Ronstadt

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. ~ Michael J. Fox

Worrying won't prevent the worst outcome. I've learned to live in the moment, which is not my natural tendency. I've always thought that if I worried about something enough, it wouldn't happen. I forgot to worry about Parkinson's. ~ Tracy Pollan

As life expectancy extends beyond 80 years in some parts of the world, more people are struggling with brain diseases. For older people, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other conditions become a major impediment to quality of life. ~ Bill Maris

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Parkinsons Disease Foundation, ~ Anonymous

Parkinson's Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion. It ~ Timothy Ferriss

The other day as I was stepping out of Star Grocery on Claremont Avenue with some pork ribs under my arm, the Berkeley sky cloudless, a smell of jasmine in the air, a car driving by with its window rolled down, trailing a sweet ache of the Allman Brothers' "Melissa," it struck me that in order to have reached only the midpoint of my life I will need to live to be 92. That's pretty old. If you live to be ninety-two, you've done well for yourself. I'd like to be optimistic, and I try to take care of my health, but none of my grandparents even made it past 76, three killed by cancer, one by Parkinson's disease. If I live no longer than any of them did, I have at most thirty years left, which puts me around sixty percent of the way through my time.



I am comfortable with the idea of mortality, or at least I always have been, up until now. I never felt the need to believe in heaven or an afterlife. It has been decades since I stopped believing-a belief that was never more than fitful and self-serving to begin with-in the possibility of reincarnation of the soul. I'm not totally certain where I stand on the whole "soul" question. Though I certainly feel as if I possess one, I'm inclined to disbelieve in its existence. I can live with that contradiction, as with the knowledge that my time is finite, and growing shorter by the day. It's just that lately, for the first time, that shortening has become perceptible. I can feel each tiny skyward lurch of the balloo ~ Michael Chabon

I apologize if there's a Parkinson's painter in the audience. I assume you do your best work in the morning. Probably gets abstract by noon. ~ Daniel Tosh

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. ~ Michael J. Fox

You don't forget you have Parkinson's disease, believe me, especially in the shower. If you are not paying attention, you fall down. ~ Linda Ronstadt

The most important thing is to bring people with Parkinson's into our world and for the public to have a real understanding of it, as they're beginning to have with autism. ~ Helen Mirren

At first he found it amusing. He coined a law intended to have the humor of a Parkinson's law that "The number of rational hypotheses
that can explain any given phenomenon is infinite." It pleased him never to run out of hypotheses. Even when his experimental work
seemed dead-end in every conceivable way, he knew that if he just sat down and muddled about it long enough, sure enough, another
hypothesis would come along. And it always did. It was only months after he had coined the law that he began to have some doubts
about the humor or benefits of it.
If true, that law is not a minor flaw in scientific reasoning. The law is completely nihilistic. It is a catastrophic logical disproof of the
general validity of all scientific method!
If the purpose of scientific method is to select from among a multitude of hypotheses, and if the number of hypotheses grows faster
than experimental method can handle, then it is clear that all hypotheses can never be tested. If all hypotheses cannot be tested, then the
results of any experiment are inconclusive and the entire scientific method falls short of its goal of establishing proven knowledge ~ Robert M. Pirsig

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. ~ Michael J. Fox

It seems The Journal of Neurology reports that the longer you smoke, the less likely you are to develop Parkinson's disease. So what are they telling us? Follow me guys. Remember, a couple of months ago, doctors said drinking a glass of alcohol every day was good for your heart. Smoking prevents Parkinson's disease. Marijuana is good for glaucoma. Sex is good for your prostate. You know, screw health care. Let's party! ~ Jay Leno

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. ~ Michael J. Fox

In addition to relieving patient suffering, research is needed to help reduce the enormous economic and social burdens posed by chronic diseases such as osteoporosis, arthritis, diabetes, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, cancer, heart disease, and stroke. ~ Ike Skelton

I knew this guy he'd been in a motorcycle accident and it really ruined him and he was a linesman working on the power
and he was working with someone who had Parkinsons so they both had complimentary inadeqacies and so two of them could do the job of one person
so they're out there fixing powerlines in the freezing cold despite the fact that one was three quarters wrecked and the other one had Parkinsons

That's how our civilization works, there's all these ruined people out there they've got problems like you can't believe,
off they go to work to do things they don't even like and look!
The Lights Are On ~ Jordan B. Peterson

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. ~ Michael J. Fox

The important thing is to bring people with Parkinson's into our world and for the public to have a real understanding of it, as they've beginning to have with autism. ~ Helen Mirren

There are environmental threats to health; there are internal threats to health - genetic conditions, viral threats, diseases like cancer and Parkinson's. And then there are societal and global ones, like poverty and lack of nutrition. And unknown viral threats - everything from a new kind of influenza to hemorrhagic fever. ~ Bill Maris

Inflammation is the cornerstone of Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis - all of the neurodegenerative diseases are really predicated on inflammation. ~ David Perlmutter

I've got two daughters who will have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don't want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; I'd rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny – a thousand things, before 'thin'. And frankly, I'd rather they didn't give a gust of stinking chihuahua flatulence whether the woman standing next to them has fleshier knees than they do. Let my girls be Hermiones, rather than Pansy Parkinsons. Let them never be Stupid Girls. ~ J.K. Rowling

If my dramatic career doesn't work out, I will go on to research and find cures for Alzheimer's or Parkinson's and other motor neuron diseases. It's a very exciting field of research. But I'd like to continue in drama, so it wouldn't be very smart of me if I blew this amazing opportunity with an inappropriate lifestyle. ~ Freddie Stroma

In Wisconsin, We're at the forefront of research that might one day bring cures for diseases like Parkinsons and Alzheimers, and we must seize its great potential. ~ Jim Doyle

For the past 10 years I have had the interesting experience of observing the development of Parkinson's syndrome on myself. As a matter of fact, this condition does not come under my special medical interests or I would have had it solved long ago. ... The condition has its compensations: one is not yanked from interesting work to go to the jungles of Burma ... one avoids all kinds of deadly committee meetings, etc. ~ Fuller Albright

Our intention is not to create cloned human beings, but rather to make lifesaving therapies for a wide range of human disease conditions, including diabetes, strokes, cancer, AIDS, and neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. ~ Robert Lanza

The connection between dopamine and belief was established by experiments conducted by Peter Brugger and his colleague Christine Mohr at the University of Bristol in England. Exploring the neurochemistry of superstition, magical thinking, and belief in the paranormal, Brugger and Mohr found that people with high levels of dopamine are more likely to find significance in coincidences and pick out meaning and patterns where there are none. In one study, for example, they compared twenty self-professed believers in ghosts, gods, spirits, and conspiracies to twenty self-professed skeptics of such claims. They showed all subjects a series of slides consisting of people's faces, some of which were normal while others had their parts scrambled, such as swapping out eyes or ears or noses from different faces. In another experiment, real and scrambled words were flashed. In general, the scientists found that the believers were much more likely than the skeptics to mistakenly assess a scrambled face as real, and to read a scrambled word as normal.
In the second part of the experiment, Brugger and Mohr gave all forty subjects L-dopa, the drug used for Parkinson's disease patients that increases the levels of dopamine in the brain. They then repeated the slide show with the scrambled or real faces and words. The boost of dopamine caused both believers and skeptics to identify scrambled faces and real and jumbled words as normal. This suggests that patternicity may be associated with ~ Michael Shermer

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. ~ Michael J. Fox

Parkinson's Fourth Law: The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done. ~ C. Northcote Parkinson

Parkinson's Law is a purely scientific discovery, inapplicable except in theory to the politics of the day. It is not the business of the botanist to eradicate the weeds. Enough for him if he can tell us just how fast they grow. ~ C. Northcote Parkinson

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. ~ Michael J. Fox

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. ~ Michael J. Fox

He had Parkinson's disease for about, I'd say diagnosed for about 11 of the last years of his life. And treatment was not as good as it is now, of course. We're still going along and he died in '85 and he was 77. ~ Lynn Redgrave

Some genetic variants can be informative about one's risk for Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. ~ Anne Wojcicki

Just as Parkinson's isn't a big topic of conversation in my house, neither is my career. ~ Michael J. Fox

I miss singing every day. I can't sing anymore. My voice doesn't work. I have Parkinson's disease, and it sometimes takes my words away from me. ~ Linda Ronstadt

No boxer in the history of boxing has had Parkinson's. There's no injury in my brain that suggests that the illness came from boxing. ~ Muhammad Ali

Fear is a bastard. Fear is an attention whore. I want to ask fear if it has mommy issues, because that's the only reason I can think why it needs attention so bad. I want fear to get Parkinson's. Then maybe fear will know how it feels to be on the run from something it doesn't understand. ~ Anne Clendening

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. ~ Michael J. Fox

In a prime-time address, President Bush said he backed limited federal funding for stem cell research. That's right, the President said, this is a quote, the research could help cure brain diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and whatever it is I have. ~ Conan O'Brien

If you want to lower your risk of Parkinson's disease, caffeine is protective to some extent; nobody knows why. Head injuries are bad for you. They lead to Parkinson's disease. ~ Gregory Petsko

I always liked to chase the girls. Parkinson's stops all that. Now I might have a chance to go to heaven. ~ Muhammad Ali

I didn't know why I couldn't sing - all I knew was that it was muscular or mechanical. Then, when I was diagnosed with Parkinson's, I was finally given the reason. I now understand that no one can sing with Parkinson's disease. No matter how hard you try. And in my case, I can't sing a note. ~ Linda Ronstadt

Using adult stem cells drawn from bone marrow and umbilical cord blood system cells, scientists have discovered new treatments for scores of diseases and conditions such as Parkinson's disease, juvenile diabetes, and spinal cord injuries. ~ Nathan Deal

Sure, it may be one step forward and two steps back, but after a time with Parkinson's, I've learned that what is important is making that step count; always looking up. ~ Michael J. Fox

Parkinson's is described as a progressive idiopathic neurodegenerative disorder, a brain disease that will worsen with time for which no cause has as yet been identified. ~ David Perlmutter

Parkinson's is a slow but inevitable process. It's hard living with it on a daily basis. The difficulty facing people with it is that they never quite know 'Can I or can't I do this today?' ~ Helen Mirren

Many physical illnesses are associated with depression and anxiety, including heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, Parkinson's disease, stroke, kidney disease, lung disease, dementia and cancer. ~ Liz Miller

The opposite of fear is faith' is an adage I heard often when I quit drinking. The thinking is that fear is paralyzing or even regressive, causing you to retreat in defense, while faith inspires forward progress. So why, I always wondered, does fear feature so prominently in our discussions and practice of faith? We talk about fear of God as a good thing - and being God-fearing as a desirable state. I know I'm not the first to say this, and smarter people have given it more thorough examination and more eloquent expression, but that just makes no sense to me. It's counterintuitive and, I think, confuses fear with respect. As a way of motivating people, cultivating fear is easier than investing the time and effort necessary to engender respect. Respect requires greater knowledge, and in my experience, the more you know, the less you fear.

In the year or so between my Parkinson's diagnosis and my quitting drinking, I had considered getting sober but feared life without the perceived buffer of alcohol. What I came to realize after a few months of disciplined sobriety was that my fear had nothing to do with alcohol or a lack thereof. It had to do with a lack of self-understanding. As I gained more intimate knowledge of myself, why I did the things I did, what my resentments were, and how I could address them, my fear began to subside. ~ Michael J Fox

Don't you love it when people in school are like, "I'm a bad test taker"? You mean, you're stupid. Oh, you struggle with that part where we find out what you know? Oh. No, no, I can totally relate. See, because I'm a brilliant painter, minus my God-awful brushstrokes. Oh, how the masterpiece is crystal up here[points to head], but once paint hits canvas, I develop Parkinson's. ~ Daniel Tosh

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. ~ Michael J. Fox

You get the health benefits of coffee up through about the first twenty-four ounces. It's the biggest source of antioxidants for Americans, and we think it helps prevent Alzheimer's and Parkinson's as well. ~ Mehmet Oz

Leo, sadly, has Parkinson's, but he used to cook all sorts of dazzling things. ~ Jilly Cooper

We have some very suggestive evidence that the use of pesticides and herbicides affects our mental function and brain physiology, including increasing the incidence of Parkinson's disease up to seven times in those most heavily exposed to them. This is not exactly a surprise when we realize that pesticides are designed to be neurotoxic to the pests. ~ Gabriel Cousens M.D.

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. ~ Michael J. Fox

We have lost close friends and relatives to cancer and Parkinson's disease, and the level of personal suffering inflicted on patients and their families by these diseases is horrific. ~ Peter Jackson

Depression can be due to a low endocrine function, nutritional deficiencies, blood sugar problems, food allergies, or systemic yeast infection. Depression can also result from medical illnesses such as stroke, heart attack, cancer, Parkinson's disease, and hormonal disorder. It can also be caused by a serious loss, a difficult relationship, a financial problem, or any stressful, unwelcome life change. ~ Chris Prentiss

Evolution lies at the heart of biology. It is seamlessly and continuously linked to health research to better understand such conditions as AIDS or bird flu or Parkinson's or cancer or heart disease. Every biomedical experiment, every tiny advance, every major breakthrough ultimately connects to the principles first postulated by Darwin. ~ Huntington Willard

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 [Parkinson's disease] to me. It is what I deal with. It is my reality and my life, but it's not horrible. ~ Michael J. Fox

I have been able to have a family and to dedicate quality time to my two sets of twins and my husband, as well as to serve on the boards of The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research and Montefiore Medical Center. ~ Karen Finerman

This is not science fiction. Around the world, 50,000 men with prostate cancer have been treated with focused ultrasound. Over 22,000 women with uterine fibroids (benign tumors of the uterus) have been treated, thus avoiding hysterectomies and infertility. Clinical trials for tumors of the brain, breast, pancreas and liver, as well as Parkinson's disease, arthritis, and hypertension are inching forward at over 225 research sites around the world. ~ John Grisham

I think we all get our own bag of hammers. We all get our own Parkinson's. We all have our own thing. I think that we'll look at it through the filter of that experience, and we'll say, "Yeah, I need to laugh at my stuff, too." ~ Michael J. Fox

Parkinson's dementia. Or was it something else? Only time would ~ Jane E. Mengesha

Joe Frazier got hit more than me - and he doesn't have Parkinson's. ~ Muhammad Ali

Studies by many labs have already started to identify specific circuits of neurons involved in normal cognitive function like memory and learning, as well as disease processes such as Parkinson's disease, depression, and autism. ~ Feng Zhang

Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, brain and spinal cord disorders, diabetes, cancer, at least 58 diseases could potentially be cured through stem cell research, diseases that touch every family in America and in the world. ~ Rosa DeLauro

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

A team from Sydney, Australia, has lowered levels of these proteins using light. They implanted human genes associated with Alzheimer's into mouse DNA, so that the animals developed abnormal tau proteins and amyloid plaques. Then they treated them for a month with low-level light therapy, simply by holding the light one to two centimeters above the animals' heads. Using the same spectrum of near-infrared light that has helped in traumatic brain injury, Parkinson's disease, and retinal damage, they lowered both the pathological tau proteins and the amyloid plaques by 70 percent in key brain areas that Alzheimer's affects. Thereafter signs of "rusting" decreased, and the mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cells, improved their function. ~ Norman Doidge

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. ~ Michael J. Fox

We are paying the price for living longer, collecting degenerative diseases along the way. Cancer is only one. Others are heart and brain diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinsons. ~ Aaron Ciechanover

I have a form of Parkinson's disease, which I don't like. My legs don't move when my brain tells them to. It's very frustrating. ~ George H. W. Bush