Tony Dorsett Quotes

Before my accident I was a little too... selfish and self-absorbed and for me, to now be at the place where I can kinda give back and inspire people. I'm blessed. I'm really blessed.

I guess real maturity, which most of us never achieve, is when you realize that you're not the center of the universe.

It could have been me. And just the hope and prayers that, you know, if, if the shoes were switched, that you know, Laci would do the same thing for me.

Ultimately, knowing God and reading the Word, it helps with patience with people, understanding, empathy and sympathy that they might not have that I have. If God gave it to me, why not exercise it?

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.

See how many are better off than you are, but consider how many are worse.

I was embarrassed by my parents. I thought they had nothing of interest to say or contribute to anything. My real crime was not understanding that they were interesting, and I have been trying to make it up to them for being so indescribably blase, so genuinely uninterested and dismissive.

When you're not involved, other people's unhappiness seems to be about the funniest damn thing on earth because you think you can solve it, that you are God, that you are above this, and that their unhappiness is just such useless toil and agony. If it's you, it ceases to be a comedy.

Learn to see in another's calamity the ills which you should avoid.

For myself, suffering doesnt make me a good person; it makes me selfish. Why do we think that people who have less should find it edifying?

We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.

I don't think we have to have a personal relation to a life lost to understand that something terrible has taken place, especially in the context of war.

I feel really privileged to have gracious and merciless people with a lot of perspective and patience in my life.

A lot of people are in much tougher situations than me and I am very fortunate to be where I am, so I try to remember that and stay humble whenever things feel tough.

Growing up in Westboro, there was a culture of celebrating death and tragedy... a very calloused way of seeing other people's pain. After I left, it took me a while to be able to really empathize with what it must have been like for the loved ones of people whose funerals we protested.

Sometimes you have to understand your place.

You understand what your eyes mean to you, but it's different when you have to go through something like I did, where it's a possibility you could have lost your eyesight. It puts things back into perspective for you and humbles you a little bit.

The more I speak and travel, I realize I don't have it that bad. There are so many people that have it so much worse than I do.

I had no shoes and I pitied myself. Then I met a man who had no feet, so I took his shoes.

I once cried because I had no shoes to play soccer, but one day, I met a man who had no feet.

Nothing helps us build our perspective more than developing compassion for others. Compassion is a sympathetic feeling. It involves the willingness to put yourself in someone else's shoes, to take the focus off yourself and to imagine what it's like to be in someone else's predicament, and simultaneously, to feel love for that person. It's the recognition that other people's problems, their pain and frustrations, are every bit as real as our own-often far worse. In recognizing this fact and trying to offer some assistance, we open our own hearts and greatly enhance our sense of gratitude.

It's wonderful to have the most important thing in the world there first thing in the morning. And especially in this business, where the opportunity to think everything is about you is there every day, now I really know that it isn't all about me.

It's a terrible thing wishing that it can be someone else's tragedy.

It is very easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements in comparison with what we owe others.

When I look at the Gospel, I see how it is speaking to me at this time. I see how to be to others and it helps.