Quotes About Disability

Today, the public mindset is beginning to shift away from a medical model of disability towards a recognition that context and self-awareness as a learner both play a huge role in whether any given condition is disabling or not.10

I've been involved with disability activities for over 40 years. I have done programs with several disabled children and involving them makes the performance genuinely heartwarming.

Pamela Anderson has more prosthetic in her body than I do. Nobody calls her disabled.

I have a one-legged friend and I asked her what they said to John at the gate. She said she reckoned they said, "The lame shall enter first." This may be because the lame will be able to knock everybody else aside with their crutches.

Listen here, Mr. Shiftlet, she said, sliding forward in her chair, you'd be getting a permanent house and a deep well and the most innocent girl in the world. You don't need no money. Lemme tell you something: there ain't any place in the world for a poor disabled friendless drifting man.

I introduced the FREED Vets Act to make student debt forgiveness for disabled veterans automatic, both now and in the future, regardless of who is in the White House.

The mere suggestion that not speaking for a day can give you an appreciation of the social isolation that comes with the experience of disability, particularly those whose impairments prohibit them from communicating verbally, is insensitive at best.

I use the term 'disabled people' quite deliberately, because I subscribe to what's called the social model of disability, which tells us that we are more disabled by the society that we live in than by our bodies and our diagnoses.

When we say 'less fortunate,' we generally mean the poor rather than the disabled, who actually are less fortunate. In truth, the poor are generally 'less fortunate' only in terms of genetics. They are certainly not less fortunate in the amount of help they receive.

I used to think of myself in terms of who I'd be if I didn't have this pesky old disability.

I believe that we should, on biblical grounds, tell all parents of mentally disabled children that God loves their children, regrets terribly that they are disabled, and will, when they die, carry them gently into a heavenly life where every person is forever whole.

So, for example, if a child is labeled as having a learning disability, it has very concrete consequences for the kinds of services and potentially accommodations that child will get.

Thus, in 1955, 1 in every 468 Americans was hospitalized due to a mental illness. In 1987, there were 1.25 million people receiving an SSI or SSDI payment because they were disabled by mental illness, or 1 in every 184 Americans.

One of the greatest obstacles for blind children, not just in Tibet but everywhere in the world, is that they are seldom treated equally with sighted children, that they are perceived as being helpless, as somehow special and different. In families and the community beyond, very little is expected of the blind child. This reinforces in them the feeling that they are useless and incapable. Special isn't good either way.

If the only time a child looks as if he has bipolar disorder is when he's frustrated, that's not bipolar disorder; that's a learning disability in the domains of flexibility and frustration tolerance.

The point is that my son has a mental disability, Principal Slater, and you people know this, and if he's skipping school it's because the school is failing to meet his needs. So let's talk about that, okay? Let's talk about that.

You've developed the strength of a draft horse while holding onto the delicacy of a daffodil ... you are the mother, advocate and protector of a child with a disability.

Building up a weakness just makes you less disabled. Building a strength can take you to the top of the world.

In wheelchair sports, people thought athletes with disabilities were courageous and inspirational. They never give them credit for simply being competitive.

There are sick people everywhere, in wheelchairs and on benches. Shelby is embarrassed to be so healthy.

Being vulnerable, as well as honest, is the key to collective liberation. This is one thing I understand from the principles of disability justice. It is not something that happens overnight after buying a candle, listening to a podcast, or reading a memoir. It requires daily intentions, self-reflections, and support from the people who care about you.

The concept of entitlement is familiar jargon in discussions of race and class, and it is just as widespread in the realm of disability. It's the idea that we are acting as if someone owes us something rather than merely asking to be treated with the respect and human dignity we deserve. It is the belief that people of a certain status or apparent condition have no right to demand better because we should just be happy with whatever we get. We should be happy we have anything at all.

We still cling as a culture to the myth of the single writer succeeding on their own as fiercely as we cling to the myth of the self-made billionaire. But that isn't what a disabled poetics and practice has to be.

There is so much that able-bodied people could learn from the wisdom that often comes with disability. But space needs to be made. Hands need to be reached out. People need to be lifted up.