Quotes About Deafness

In most of us there is a tiny voice we consult as part of our thought processes. Deaf people literally don't hear themselves thinking.

The oralists believe in speaking and lipreading without ever signing; and the manualists are pro-signing in American Sign Language (ASL).

Mom turned to me, puzzled. In sign language, she asked, "What was Grandpa saying in the kitchen?" My heart froze.

My father, she insisted, was not born deaf. "Insisted" because there was an even greater stigma attached to genetic deafness (and the family) than there was to acquired deafness.

For so long I'd been doing what I'd accused other people of doing—I was seeing the deafness, not the people.

By the age of two, hearing children perceived their parents' deafness well enough to know automatically that they must use gestures with their parents and other deaf people. If the children talked at all, their voices had an unusual quality and they exaggerated their mouth movements. These same children immediately shifted gears, speaking in "normal" voices, with hearing people.

Looking for a place to live at a time when landlords wouldn't rent to deaf people and setting up bank accounts when banks often required deaf people to get co-signees just for checking accounts wasn't going to be easy.

For the first time, it hit me that my mother and father were deaf.

Time and again I heard my grandmother Wells say she would give her own hearing to make her daughter "whole." In her mind, deafness was some kind of divine retribution.

A conservative survey once showed that the average deaf high school graduate has a third-grade reading ability.

Every day they met with constant, irritating reminders of their shortcomings, from the petty annoyance of not being able to ask for a cup of coffee in a restaurant, to the sobering knowledge that they couldn't hear cars careening around corners, and that deaf people had been shot in the back by policemen when they hadn't heard a command to halt.

That was another thing hearing people did—made too-large movements. It was tantamount to shouting.)

What humiliation when someone who stood next to me heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or when someone heard the shepherd boy singing and again I heard nothing. Such misfortune brought me to the edge of despair, and I might have brought an end to my life—only my art held me back.

I'm sorry I can't hear you

Did money give people a blind spot? Rob them of their hearing?

no hay peor sordo que el que quiere oír

The only thing I can't do is hear. I can drive, I have a life with four kids, I work on TV, I do movies, so the deafness question, is it that they want to know because, what? Not sure.

I hope that through my example, such as my role on 'The West Wing ' I can help change attitudes on deafness and prove we can really do everything... except hear.

It never ceased to amaze Lacey how ignorant people were about deafness. Forget understanding Deaf Culture. Forget hearing people respecting them as a linguistic community with a shared history, language, and pride. That was way beyond most hearing people's understanding. Their perspective was that of pity, impairment, and fixing. Lacey was proud to be a Deaf woman, wouldn't want to become hearing for anything in the world.

American Sign Language was her language, her birthright, not some subpar substitute for English.

Love can blind you, but woe to one who becomes both blind and deaf.

is a great vexation to the spirits of good ministers to see people deaf to all the fair warnings given them, and running headlong upon ruin, notwithstanding all the kind methods taken to prevent it.

there are none so deaf as those that will not hear.

It means there are none so deaf as those that will not hear.