59 Quotes by Betty Ford

And I have always told the patients when I talk to them. When they come around and say, "What will you have to drink? Oh that's right you don't drink." Just speak up and say, 'Of course I drink. But I just don't drink alcohol.'

My makeup wasn't smeared, I wasn't disheveled, I behaved politely, and I never finished off a bottle, so how could I be alcoholic?

But my activities have been pretty much focused in the last almost 30 years on the recovery, of my own recovery, the understanding for my family of my recovery.

I'll never forget the day that I was told I would have to have a mastectomy. My reaction to the words was total denial.

Isn't that wonderful? When we drove through several of the places we lived - Grand Rapids, Washington - they all had those placards. That they stood by the street and had in their hands placards that said 'Gerald Our Ford'. That meant so much to us as we were driving into Washington.

We're full all the time. And people do have good success and I think one of the programs at the center, the Continuing Care, helps them with their success. Because it's difficult the first year.

For 14 years, I'd been on medication for the pinched nerve, the arthritis, the muscle spasms in my neck, and I'd lost my tolerance for pills. If I had a single drink, the alcohol, on top of the pills, would make me groggy.

I think it wasn't so much that the White House altered me in any essential way as that I found the resources with which to respond to a series of challenges. You never know what you can do until you have to do it. In the beginning, it was like going to a party you're terrified of, and finding out to your amazement that you're having a good time.

When other women have this same operation, it doesn't make any headlines. But the fact that I was the wife of the President put it in headlines and brought before the public this particular experience I was going through. It made a lot of women realize that it could happen to them. I'm sure I've saved at least one person maybe more.