Daily Inspiration Quote by Michael J. Fox

Fox’s line is a small act of defiance dressed up as a calm maxim. “Assaulted, vandalized and cruelly mocked” is not polite phrasing; it’s a catalogue of what happens when the world decides you’re fair game. The verbs are physical, almost street-level. Dignity isn’t framed as some airy virtue but as property that can be damaged in public, like a wall tagged overnight. That choice matters: it admits the real harm of humiliation without granting it final authority.

The pivot comes with “but cannot be taken away unless it is surrendered,” where Fox quietly relocates power. He’s not pretending you can control what people do to you. He’s insisting you can control the final meaning of it. “Surrendered” is the key word: it implies pressure, fatigue, temptation, and the slow erosion of self-respect that can follow chronic scrutiny. Dignity becomes less a possession than a stance you keep taking, over and over, even when you’re tired of being brave.

In context, the quote reads like a distilled coping strategy from a celebrity whose body became a public narrative after his Parkinson’s diagnosis. Fame already makes you a surface for projection; illness intensifies the gawking, the pity, the jokes. Fox’s intent isn’t to romanticize suffering. It’s to draw a boundary between vulnerability and defeat: you can be hurt, even ridiculed, and still refuse the story that you’re reduced to what happened to you.