2018 Parkinson’s Awareness Month and 65 Quotes to Support Your Life With Parkinson’s

“Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.” Jim Valvano

“Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.” Brené Brown

1. “To me, hope is informed optimism.” Michael J. Fox
2. “The truth is that on most days, there comes a point where I literally can’t stop laughing at my own symptoms.” Michael J. Fox

3. “The strongest people are not those who show strength in front of us but those who win battles we know nothing about.” Anonymous

4. “Behind every chronic illness is just a person trying to find their way in the world. We want to find love and be loved and be happy just like you. We want to be successful and do something that matters. We’re just dealing with unwanted limitations in our hero’s journey.” Glenn Schweitzer
5. “Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.”Muhammad Ali
6. “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.” Muhammad Ali
7. “Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life. Tip Toe if you must, but take a step.” Naeem Callaway
8. “When the unthinkable happens, the lighthouse is hope. Once we choose hope, everything is possible.”  Christopher Reeve
9. “Believe in yourself and all that you are. Know that there is something inside of you that is greater than any obstacle.” Christian D. Larson
10. “You shouldn’t focus on why you can’t do something, which is what most people do. You should focus on why perhaps you can, and be one of the exceptions.” Steve Case
11. “Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work; you don’t give up.” Anne Lamott
12. “You are strong when you know your weaknesses. You are beautiful when you appreciate your flaws. You are wise when you learn from your mistakes.”  unknown
13. “Champions aren’t made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them—a desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have last-minute stamina, they have to be a little faster, they have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill.”Muhammad Ali
14. “The strongest people I’ve met have not been given an easier life. They’ve learned to create strength and happiness from dark places.”  Kristen Butler
15. “You either get bitter or you get better. It’s that simple. You either take what has been dealt to you and allow it to make you a better person, or you allow it to tear you down. The choice does not belong to fate, it belongs to you.” Josh Shipp
16. “It’s not selfish to love yourself, take care of yourself, and to make your happiness a priority.” Mandy Hale
17. “Live to inspire, and one day people will say, because of you, I didn’t give up” unknown
18. “Some days are better, some days are worse. Look for the blessing instead of the curse. Be positive, stay strong, and get enough rest. You can’t do it all, but you can do your best.” Doe Zantamata
19. “I can’t tell you when, but I can promise you it will get better, it will get easier, and it will all be worthwhile. Just promise me you won’t ever give up.” unknown
20. “Maybe life isn’t about avoiding the bruises. Maybe it’s about collecting the scars to prove that we showed up for it.” Hannah Brecher
21. “We are stronger in the places we have been broken.” Ernest Hemingway
22. “Just put one foot in front of the other.”  Austin Peck
23. “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”  Henry Ford
24. “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”  Helen Keller
25. “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.”  Henry Ford
26. “We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” Walt Disney
27. “I find that the best way to do things is to constantly move forward and to never doubt anything and keep moving forward, if you make a mistake say you made a mistake.”  John Frusciante
28. “Don’t dwell on what went wrong. / Instead, focus on what to do next. / Spend your energies on moving forward / toward finding the answer.” Denis Waitley
29. “If you stumble, make it part of the dance.” unknown
30. “If opening your eyes, or getting out of bed, or holding a spoon, or combing your hair is the daunting Mount Everest you climb today, that is okay.” Carmen Ambrosio
31. “Please be patient with me. Sometimes when I’m quiet, it’s because I need to figure myself out. It’s not because I don’t want to talk. Sometimes there are no words for my thoughts.”  Kamla Bolaños
32. “What would the hero of your life’s movie do right now? Do that!” Joe Rogan
33. “Inspirations knock and hang around for a while and wait for some kind of response, which is the beginning of a creative act.” Thomas Moore
34. “What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” Jane Goodall
35. “What’s meant to be will always find a way” Trisha Yearwood
36. “Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.”  Bruce Lee
37. “One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.” Albert Schweitzer
38. “When we long for life without difficulties, remind us that oaks grow strong in contrary winds and diamonds are made under pressure.” Peter Marshall
39. “Ask yourself what problem you have right now. Not next year, tomorrow or five minutes from now. You can always cope with the now, but you can never cope with the future. Nor do you have to. The answer, the strength and the right action will be there when you need it. Not before or after.” Eckhart Tolle
40. “Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.” Lance Armstrong
41. “If you are depressed you are living in the past.
    If you are anxious you are living in the future.
    If you are at peace you are living in the present.”
    Lao Tzu
42. “To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.” Erich Fromm
43. “Sometimes the hardest part isn’t letting go but rather learning to start over.” Nicole Sobon
44. “You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.” Thomas Merton
45. “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” Lao Tzu
46. “Everyone is handed adversity in life. No one’s journey is easy. It’s how they handle it that makes people unique.” Kevin Conroy
47. “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.” Eleanor Roosevelt
48. “Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark.” George Iles
49. “Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.” Winston S. Churchill
50. “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” Desmond Tutu
51. “Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.” Thich Nhat Hanh
52. “There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something tomorrow.” Orison Swett Marden
53. “Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don’t have the strength. ”Theodore Roosevelt
54. “The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.” Ben Okri
55. “Sometimes you will be in control of your illness and other times you’ll sink into despair, and that’s OK! Freak out, forgive yourself, and try again tomorrow.” Kelly Hemingway
56. “You may be the only person left who believes in you, but it’s enough. It takes just one star to pierce a universe of darkness. Never give up.” Richelle E. Goodrich
57. “You can have anything you want if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, do anything you set out to accomplish if you hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.” Abraham Lincoln
58. “Whatever you are, be a good one.” Abraham Lincoln
59. “I know now, after fifty years, that the finding/losing, forgetting/remembering, leaving/returning, never stops. The whole of life is about another chance, and while we are alive, till the very end, there is always another chance.” Jeanette Winterson
60. “Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober; not to make us sorry but wise.” H.G. Wells
61. “Since receiving my Parkinson’s diagnosis, my opinion of exercise has changed.  With Parkinson’s, I’m now exercising as if my life depends on it.”  Frank C. Church
    
62. We are identified by our characteristic symptoms of our unwanted companion named Parkinson’s. We are all in this together, united by our disorder; held together by those who love and care for us.” Frank C. Church
    
63. Today renew your lease for the rest of your life, enjoy it (get up, get out, get going). Today acknowledge your Parkinson’s; give it a nudge, because you are ready for the battle and for life.” Frank C. Church
    
64. “The sum total of our health is a complex formula that differs slightly for each one of us.  Those of us with a progressive neurodegenerative disorder like Parkinson’s increases the complexity of this life-equation.” Frank C. Church
    
65. “Living with Parkinson’s requires you to adapt to its subtle but progressive changes over a long period of time; you need to remain hopeful for many different things.” Frank C. Church

“When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”  Jacob A. Riis

Cover photo credit: https://uspstrackingtool.com/red-tulips-bouquet-of-flowers-wallpaper/