Quotes from Patch Adams

We are a breathtakingly alienated people... One of my props is the world's largest underpants. I've had the president of Costa Rica in my underpants with me.

Spread joy. Chase your wildest dreams.

Robin Williams was a wonderful, kind, and generous man. One important thing I remember about his personality is that he was unassuming - he never acted as if he was powerful or famous.

I first came to Russia because of the culture, literature and music... and my interest in the 19th-century revolutionary spirit of Herzen, Bakunin and Kropotkin. Russia is a wonderful place to bring new clowns because Russians give back a wonderful response.

When you left the house today, you had the intention of putting clothes on and you did. You didn't try to put your pants on today. You simply put them on. The same has to hold for all of our intentions. We don't try to be more loving partners. We make the intention, and we act on it.

If we don't change from a world society that worships money and power to one that worships compassion and generosity, I think we'll be extinct by mid-century. I don't say that as an alarmist or as a pessimist.

I'm great at a deathbed. I've never given tranquillisers or psychiatric medicine. I've given love and fun and creativity and passion and hope, and these things ease suffering.

Humor is an antidote to all ills.

Givers get trust quicker than other people. People trust generous people.

I love you without knowing how, why, or even from where

We have to end the capitalist system. We have to make love our value. You are rich when you love and you are rich when you are giving away your time and what you have to help other people.

The reason adults should look as though they are having fun, is to give kids a reason to want to grow up.

I'm a clown, which could be a public health role. I'm really interested in moving our society away from a society needing Xanax and Prozac, and that is really feeling depressed, to one that is celebrating, and so I find just walking around in colorful clothes, people smile.

Clowning is a trick to get love close. I can hug 99 percent of people in the first second of contact if I'm in my clown character. The clown assumes your humanity. It assumes that, whatever trauma you've had, you can still love yourself.

The medium of response in America is fame; that's how a person that bounces a ball can make millions of dollars, and a school teacher with no fame makes $35,000.

You've got to know what you want. This is central to acting on your intentions. When you know what you want, you realize that all there is left then is time management. You'll manage your time to achieve your goals because you clearly know what you're trying to achieve in your life.

People like givers, people want to help givers. I get stuff all the time.

What I really want is a world where no one alive can remember what the word 'war' means. That's my goal.

Is letting our children watch TV a form of child abuse? If our children grow up knowing everything about Britney Spears and nothing about nature or faith, about anything, is that not a form of child abuse?

Every problem in history is due to men, so I'm basically asking for humanity to nest itself in a feminine culture, probably for the next 1,000 years.

Wearing underwear on the outside of your clothes can turn a tedious trip to the store for a forgotten carton of milk into an amusement park romp.

Unlike a lot of people, I don't feel powerless. I know I can do something. But anyone can do something, it's not about being special. It's about deciding to do it - to dive into work for peace and justice and care for everybody on the planet.

I entered medicine to use it as a vehicle for social change.

I've taken clowns into the war in Bosnia, the refugee camps of Kosovo, and none of those are any more important than clowning in a subway or an elevator or just walking down the street.