Our people page on Morrie Schwartz

More from and about
Morrie Schwartz
(biographical info at bottom of page)

Don’t let go too soon, but don’t hang on too long.

I think so many of us are too hard on ourselves for what we didn’t accomplish or what we should have done. The first step is to forgive yourself for all the things you didn’t do that you should have and all the things that you did do that you shouldn’t have. Get rid of the guilt. Negative feelings don’t do you much good. The way to deal with them is to forgive yourself and forgive others.

There is no formula to relationships. They have to be negotiated in loving ways, with room for both parties, what they want and what they need, what they can do and what their life is like. In business, people negotiate to win. They negotiate to get what they want. Maybe you’re too used to that. Love is different. Love is when you are as concerned about someone else’s situation as you are about your own.

So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way to get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives your purpose and meaning. We've got a form of brainwashing going on in our country. . . Do you know how they brainwash people? They repeat something over and over. And that's what we do in this country. Owning things is good. More money is good. More property is good. More commercialism is good. MORE IS GOOD. MORE IS GOOD. We repeat it--and have it repeated to us--over and over until nobody bothers to even think otherwise. The average person is so fogged up by all this, he or she has no perspective on what's really important anymore.

For me, living means I can be responsive to the other person. It means I can show my emotions and my feelings. Talk to them. Feel with them.

As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had,
we can die without ever really going away. All the love you created is still
there. All the memories are still there. You live on—in the hearts of everyone
you have touched and nurtured while you were here.

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We think we don't deserve love, we think if we let it in we'll become too soft.
But a wise man named Levine said it right. He said, "Love is the only rational act."

It’s natural to die. The fact that we make such a big hullabaloo
over it is all because we don’t see ourselves as part of nature.
We think because we’re human we’re something above nature.

Do the kind of things that come from the heart. When you do, you won't
be dissatisfied, you won't be envious, you won't be longing for somebody
else's things. On the contrary, you'll be overwhelmed with what comes back.

Morris S. Schwartz (b. December 20, 1916 at New York City, d. November 4, 1995 at Newton, Massachusetts) was an American educator. He gained posthumous fame as subject of the book Tuesdays With Morrie, published in 1997.

Schwartz grew up in the Jewish tenements in New York City. He took his undergraduate degree from City College in New York, and received his Masters and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1946 and 1951 respectively. He wrote three books on mental health in the 1950s and 1960s. Additionally, he began teaching at Brandeis University, in the sociology department. Among his students was future sportswriter Mitch Albom. Schwartz continued to teach at Brandeis into his 70s, until a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis made it too difficult for him to continue.

After seeing Schwartz on Nightline discussing his illness, Albom found his old mentor, and they collaborated on Tuesdays with Morrie during Schwartz's final days in 1995. The book was published in 1997 and has spent more than 6 years on the USA Today best seller list. It was made into a TV movie in 1999, with Jack Lemmon playing the role of Schwartz.

His personal epitaph was "A Teacher to the Last."

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