Tammy Duckworth Quotes

Ya know, right now the most important thing in my life is to make sure you understand that, first of all I thank God I'm alive today, and I mean that. I spent too many years of my life thinking that the big party was the whole thing.

I was never afraid of failure after that because, I think, coming that close to death you get kissed. With the years, the actual experience of course fades, but the flavor of it doesn't. I just had a real sense of what choice do I have but to live fully?

An awareness of one's mortality can lead you to wake up and live an authentic, meaningful life.

I want to see, that's all. This is my life. I want to see.

Wonderful things happen when you turn 50: you change perspective. You ask, 'Who am I? What do I want to do with my life? What have I not done that I want to do?'

The good life consists in deriving happiness by using your signature strengths every day in the main realms of living. The meaningful life adds one more component: using these same strengths to forward knowledge, power or goodness.

I nearly died three times in 2008, and when you go through those experiences, you realize that you're blessed every day that you wake up. My world changed, my life changed, and with the help of my wife Jane, I was able to survive.

I always tell people I'm grateful for my cancer diagnosis because it was the greatest gift because it completely changed my life. I was able to stop and let my whole life and world just crash over me like a wave. And I stood there and went, 'Wow.' And for the first time, I stopped everything. I had to.

When you have an intimate encounter with mortality as my family and I did with my mom's death, I took a long look at my life and I asked myself what was the one thing that I hadn't done that I had really wanted to do. And it was to write and direct a film.

There were a lot of people, I found, who'd rather watch me live my life than live their own life.

Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.

I've come to believe that whoever I am didn't start on December 14, 1946, and isn't going to end on whatever that mysterious date is in the future.

For me, life isn't about being recognized or having everyone know who I am. That's not why I'm here. To me, my foundation is the most important thing I do or have ever done. That's what my life is about.

I embarked on my life - I didn't do anything. I don't have an explanation.

So many people go through life, and they never deal with their own issues, no matter what the issues are - ours happen to be gender identity. But, how many people go through life and just waste an entire life 'cause they'd never deal with themselves to be who they are.

All my life, I always wanted to be somebody. Now I see that I should have been more specific.

Facing my own death brought an instant sense of clarity and purpose.

I'm really clear about what my life mission is now. There's no more depression or lethargy, and I feel like I've returned to the athlete I once was. I'm integrating all the parts of me - jock, musician, writer, poet, philosopher - and becoming stronger as a result.

Life experience is not something to be denied, but to be celebrated.

I just try to live my life and do my thing.

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

Life is a great university for the unfolding of the mind, for developing character. In choosing our life work, when we are free to choose, we should remember this, and choose that which will call the biggest man or woman out of us and not that from which we can coin the most dollars.

It was a beautiful experience for her, the experience that she had that she confesses. It wasn't dirty and it wasn't horrible and wasn't shattering. It was a wonderful, liberating experience.

I believe BMX has shaped me into who I am today, so if this journey never would have begun, then who knows the person I would be or what I would be doing with my life.

My trade and art is to live.