Deafness Quotes

Deaf people are struggling to find their favorite show or something that represents them. It's hard. There are some examples of shows that have a deaf storyline in one episode, like Cold Case, or another show where they are focusing on the cochlear implant or the medical aspect. ~ Sean Berdy

The plain man is familiar with blindness and deafness, and knows from his everyday experience that the look of things is influenced by his senses; but it never occurs to him to regard the whole world as the creation of his senses. ~ Ernst Mach

Too many people think that great victories like Grant's and Edison's came from a flash of insight. That they cracked the problem with pure genius. In fact, it was the slow pressure, repeated from many different angles, the elimination of so many other more promising options, that slowly and surely churned the solution to the top of the pile. Their genius was unity of purpose, deafness to doubt, and the desire to stay at it. ~ Ryan Holiday

The power of the man, with a mind shut down. The strength of the super human. The survival of the species. The deafness of a beast. That's the power of the penis. ~ Deborah Ainslie

Pain collected into deep pockets and I was aware of this painbut somehow I could not seem to feel it. It was like a body-deafness. ~ Karen Russell

Blindness separates people from things;
deafness separates people from people. ~ Helen Keller

Selective deafness was one of the many time-honored survival mechanisms of motherhood. ~ Nikki Sex

Relatedness is vital in a time when so many people suffer from social deafness. Emotional insensitivity being caused by a redoubtable "tin ear" makes it impossible to hear any signs of empathy or capture the vibrant qualities of 'sharing'. ("Only needed a light ") ~ Erik Pevernagie

The well-being of any household rests on selective acts of blindness and deafness. ~ Vivek Shanbhag

Brimstone: ' ... I shall smite thee with my fightful blasting wand so that thy teeth shall drop out, thy skin shall wrinkle, thou shalt have boils on thy bottom and be subject to night sweats, ringing in the ears, falling sickness, flaking dandruff, arthritis, lumbago, uncontrollable dribbling, deafness, runny nose, and ingrowing toenails. Amen. ~ Herbie Brennan

It was very bad for me that my deafness happened at around the same time as I discovered my clitoris. ~ Jeanette Winterson

I had once believed that we were all masters of our fate
that we could mold our lives into any form we pleased ... I had overcome deafness and blindness sufficiently to be happy, and I supposed that anyone could come out victorious if he threw himself valiantly into life's struggle. But as I went more and more about the country I learned that I had spoken with assurance on a subject I knew little about ... I learned that the power to rise in the world is not within the reach of everyone. ~ Helen Keller

So long as I confine my activities to social service and the blind, they compliment me extravagantly, calling me 'arch priestess of the sightless,' 'wonder woman,' and a 'modern miracle.' But when it comes to a discussion of poverty, and I maintain that it is the result of wrong economics - that the industrial system under which we live is at the root of much of the physical deafness and blindness in the world - that is a different matter! It is laudable to give aid to the handicapped. Superficial charities make smooth the way of the prosperous; but to advocate that all human beings should have leisure and comfort, the decencies and refinements of life, is a Utopian dream, and one who seriously contemplates its realization indeed must be deaf, dumb, and blind. ~ Helen Keller

We all have our handicaps. You're not mine. ~ Kelly Moran

I live my life like everyone else; everyone has their own obstacles. Mine is deafness. ~ Marlee Matlin

The diagnosis of high-frequency deafness cast a faint shadow over his happiness, but their mutual enjoyment of sex was not much affected, the sounds which accompany it being mostly non-verbal and low frequency in wavelength. Inevitably, ~ David Lodge

I practise selective deafness to hurtful remarks. ~ Scott Lynch

We are the most alive and closest to the meaning of existence when we are most vulnerable, when experience has humbled us and has cured the arrogance which, like a form of deafness, prevents us from hearing the lessons that this world teaches. ~ Dean Koontz

My father spoke with his hands. He was deaf. His voice was in his hands. And his hands contained his memories. ~ Myron Uhlberg

Instead of giving in to the greatest misfortune that can happen at my age, deafness, I busy myself in searching out all possible compensations, and I apply myself much more to all the amusements that are here within my grasp. ~ Lord Chesterfield

I do strongly feel that among the greatest pieces of luck for high achievement is ordeal. Certain great artists can make out without it, Titian and others, but mostly you need ordeal. My idea is this: the artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business: Beethoven's deafness, Goya's deafness, Milton's blindness, that kind of thing. ~ John Berryman

Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us? ~ Frank Herbert

She was not sure that her deafness had strengthened her character. She was not even sure she had met a challenge. A silent world was as natural to her as a noisy one must be to them, she reflected. But people tended to assume that deaf persons could function as people only if they learned to conform to a world of sound. What about the challenge of silence? Very few people of hearing ever accepted it or even knew that there was a challenge there. People of hearing feared silence ... ~ Mary Balogh

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. ~ Marlee Matlin

A fundamental requirement, overriding any other for this job, is an understanding of deafness-what it is and how it affects the educational experience. ~ Paul Simon

During a visit to California, when a friend of my grandmother's told my parents that I must be deaf because I was not responding to sounds, my father was absolutely convinced that I was simply being stubborn. ~ Marlee Matlin

I placed over a thousand deaf people in jobs throughout my career working for the deaf. ~ Camryn Manheim

People could play blindness and deafness game when it comes to your work and achievements. But your work will alway be a mega picture in their midst and your words will always be your voice that will never depart from their ears. ~ Euginia Herlihy

Two great areas of deafness existed in the South: White Southerners had no ears to hear that which threatened their Dream. And colored Southerners had none to hear that which could reduce their anger. ~ Sarah-Patton Boyle

I'm not really deaf; I just faked it to win the Oscar KIDDING. ~ Marlee Matlin

I have been writing in spurts, bit by bit. It is incredibly difficult. Everything is corroded, broken, dismantled; everything is covered with hardened layers of accumulated insensitivity, deafness, entrenched routine. It is disgusting. ~ Boris Pasternak

Why am I so interested in politics? But if I were to answer you very simply, I would say this: why shouldn't I be interested? That is to say, what blindness, what deafness, what density of ideology would have to weigh me down to prevent me from being interested in what is probably the most crucial subject to our existence, that is to say the society in which we live, the economic relations within which it functions, and the system of power which defines the regular forms and the regular permissions and prohibitions of our conduct. The essence of our life consists, after all, of the political functioning of the society in which we find ourselves.
So I can't answer the question of why I should be interested; I could only answer it by asking why shouldn't I be interested? ~ Michel Foucault

To my deafness I'm accustomed, To my dentures I'm resigned, I can manage my bifocals, But Oh how I miss my mind. ~ Alec Douglas-Home

Let's take my truck," Jim said as he hit the gravel. "Less noise."
And it has a radio, right?" With tragic concentration Adrian started warming up his voice, sounding like a moose being backstroked by a chesse grater.
Jim shook his head at Eddie as the doors opened "How can you stand that racket?"
Selective deafness"
Teach me,master. ~ J.R. Ward

Im in my mid-30s, Ive won an Oscar, I have four children. You figure out if my deafness has adversely affected my life. ~ Marlee Matlin

Neither religion nor race mattered to me, but communication did. If you were willing to be my friend and accept my deafness, I didn't care if you were white, black, Catholic, Jewish, Swahili, or whatever. I didn't care if you worked as a CEO or passed your time handing out flowers at the airport. If you can communicate, you're my friend. This is a great example of how I feel that my deafness has helped me grow spiritually - I could appreciate my interaction with anyone, and just be happy we could get along rather than get bogged down on whatever groups or religions they belonged to. Really, human interaction is a blessing; it is such a waste to discriminate. ~ Mark Drolsbaugh

The organizations of men, like men themselves, seem subject to deafness, near-sightedness, lameness, and involuntary cruelty. We seem tragically unable to help one another, to understand one another. ~ John Cheever

But I was not in the band, because I suffer from the kind of tone deafness that is generally associated with actual deafness ~ John Green

What matters deafness of the ear, when the mind hears? The one true deafness, the incurable deafness, is that of the mind. ~ Victor Hugo

Deafness, though it be total and congenital, imposes no limits on the intellectual development of its subjects, save in the single direction of the appreciation of acoustic phenomena. ~ Edward Miner Gallaudet

If I hadn't lost my hearing, I wouldn't be where I am now. It forced me to maximize my own potential. I have to be better than the average person to succeed. ~ Lou Ferrigno

Did you just call me a mutt?":
"Yes! Fur, paws..selective deafness. Just like my aunt's lab. He always ignores me unless I have food for him. So ... mutt. ~ Mina Carter

Most profoundly deaf people have speech that is very difficult to understand. ~ Richard Masur

The removal of his infected adenoids and tonsils had not cured Keziah's deafness, but had improved it markedly. He ~ Diana Gabaldon

It is useful to be reminded of your place, and to recognise just how much you still have to learn, and how much you will never know. ~ Neil Ansell

I have a tiny little secret hope that, after a decent period of silence and prose, I will find myself in some almost impossible life situation and will respond to this with outcries of rage, rage and love, such as the world has never heard before. Like Yeats's great outburst at the end of his life. This comes out of a feeling that endowment is a very small part of achievement. I would rate it about fifteen or twenty percent, Then you have historical luck, personal luck, health, things like that, then you have hard work, sweat. And you have ambition. The incredible difference between the achievement of A and the achievement of B is that B wanted it, so he made all kinds of sacrifices. A could have had it, but he didn't give a damn.[...]

But what I was going on to say is that I do strongly feel that among the greatest pieces of luck for high achievement is ordeal. Certain great artists can make out without it, Titian and others, but mostly you need ordeal. My idea is this: the artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business. Beethoven's deafness, Goya's deafness, Milton's blindness, that kind of thing. And I think that what happens in my poetic work in the future will probably largely depend not on my sitting calmly on my ass as I think, "Hmm, hmm, a long poem again? Hmm," but on being knocked in the face, and thrown flat, and given cancer, and all kinds of other things short ~ John Berryman

I am just as deaf as I am blind. The problems of deafness are deeper and more complex, if not more important than those of blindness. Deafness is a much worse misfortune. For it means the loss of the most vital stimulus- the sound of the voice that brings language, sets thoughts astir, and keeps us in the intellectual company of man. ~ Helen Keller

How little we realize things till they come upon us personally. I believe I have been a perfect fiend of indifference, even intolerance, of deaf people, and now it's me. Well, I am determined to become the most Delightful Deaf Old Lady that ever existed and I am practicing to that end ... ~ Susan Hale

A bigot is a stone-deaf orator. ~ Kahlil Gibran

Old age doth in sharp pains abound; We are belabored by the gout, Our blindness is a dark profound, Our deafness each one laughs about. Then reason's light with falling ray Doth but a trembling flicker cast. Honor to age, ye children pay! Alas! my fifty years are past! ~ Pierre-Jean De Beranger

I know deaf people. I have discussed the issues with them I've also thought about them a lot so I have some insights that go a little further than people who haven't had contact with the deaf community. ~ Richard Masur

Liao writes with the courage of a man who knows loss and doesn't fear it. There is nothing to make him notice like an official injunction against noticing, nothing to make him listen like official deafness, nothing that drives him to make us see like the blindness that officialdom seeks to impose. ~ Liao Yiwu

There are normal times when it is wholly admirable to be steadfast, resolute, unconflicted, and therefore when integrity is unmistakenly a virtue. The person of integrity knows what to do, and does it. But as we have been exploring, there are also times when certainty and single-mindedness indicate something less admirable: a deafness to voices that should be heard or a blindness to aspects of a situation that need to be considered. ~ Simon Blackburn

I think the deafness affects me more than I realise; I think it makes me more tired. I loathe parties. I attend, smile and leave. ~ Stephanie Beacham

I lived through the Fifties in the Midwest when everything that was happening - the repression of homosexuality, for instance, the demonization of the Left, the giggly, soporific ordinariness of adolescence, the stone-deafness to the social injustice all around us - seemed not only unobjectionable but also nonexistent. ~ Edmund White

Ah," said Lien Shu, "it is true that a blind person cannot appreciate beautiful patterns and forms, and the deaf cannot appreciate the music of bells and drums. Yet blindness and deafness do not only afflict people physically, they also exist in the minds and attitudes of people. ~ Zhuangzi

A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism. ~ Aldous Huxley

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. ~ Marlee Matlin

I knew whatever I said right then she wouldn't hear; with that kind of pain, a deafness comes. ~ Sarah Dessen

On the other hand, there are only so many people who really knew how she was exactly, like what did her accent sound like, and the fact that she developed profound deafness when she was first running the Harriet Lane. ~ Mary Stuart Masterson

A theologian who does not love art, poetry, music and nature can be dangerous. Blindness and deafness toward the beautiful are not incidental; they necessarily are reflected in his theology. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

I actually think the deafness makes you see clearer. If you can't hear, you somehow see. ~ David Hockney

At Gallaudet, deafness isn't an issue. You don't even think about it. Students can pay attention to accounting or psychology or journalism. But when a deaf person goes to another college, no matter how supportive it is, that person doesn't get the same access. ~ I. King Jordan

Good music was meant to be loud! ~ Ahmed Mostafa

Trust is not simply a matter of truthfulness, or even constancy. It is also a matter of amity and goodwill. We trust those who have our best interests at heart, and mistrust those who seem deaf to our concerns. ~ Gary Hamel

As long as we have deaf people on earth, we will have signs. And as long as we have our films, we can preserve signs in their old purity. It is my hope that we will all love and guard our beautiful sign language as the noblest gift God has given to deaf people. ~ George Veditz

It amazes me when I hear any person prefer blindness to deafness. Such a person must have a terrible dread of being alone. Blindness makes one totally dependent on others, and deprives us of every satisfaction that results from light. ~ Horace Walpole

It's different for each individual. It's different when you talk about homosexuality. It's different when you talk about a malady like deafness. Everybody might have a different response to that and that's what makes it an interesting subject to throw in a movie. ~ Famke Janssen

Your tale, sir, would cure deafness. ~ William Shakespeare

Deafness produces bizarre effects, reversing the natural order of things; the interchange of letters is the conversation of the deaf, and the only link with society. I would be in despair, for instance, over seeing you speak, but, instead, I am only too happy to hear you write. ~ Lord Chesterfield

There are two parts to the human dilemma. One is the belief that the end justifies the means. That push-button philosophy, that deliberate deafness to suffering, has become the monster in the war machine. The other is the betrayal of the human spirit: the assertion of dogma that closes the mind, and turns a nation, a civilization, into a regiment of ghosts
obedient ghosts or tortured ghosts. ~ Jacob Bronowski

And I found out about the wonderful world of sign language. I suddenly realized: If we as a society recognize Jewish culture, gay culture and Latino culture, we must recognize that this is a coherent culture, too. I think deafness is a disability for social constructionist reasons. ~ Andrew Solomon

Let your deafness no longer be a secret - even in art. ~ Ludwig Van Beethoven

Several hundred languages are fighting for recognition and promotion; the language barriers are rising. Deafness and incomprehension are multiplying. ~ Ryzard Kapuscinski

My words are a whisper, your deafness a shout. ~ Jethro Tull

I've always wanted to write a book relating my experiences growing up as a deaf child in Chicago. Contrary to what people might think, it wasn't all about hearing aids and speech classes or frustrations. ~ Marlee Matlin

I do not care to be admired causelessly, emotionally, intuitively, instinctively - or blindly. I do not care for blindness in any form, I have too much to show - or for deafness, I have too much to say. I do not care to be admired by anyone's heart - only by someone's head. ~ Ayn Rand

Poor children live in a particularly dangerous world
an urban world of broken stair railings, of busy streets serving as playgrounds, of lead paint, rats and rat poisons, or a rural world where families do not enjoy the minimal levels of public health accepted as standard for nearly a century. Whether in city or country, this is a world where cavities go unfilled and ear infections threatening permanent deafness go untreated. It is world where even a small child learns to be ashamed of the way he or she lives. ~ Kenneth Keniston

Late have I loved Thee, O Lord; and behold, Thou wast within and I without, and there I sought Thee. Thou was with me when I was not with Thee. Thou didst call, and cry, and burst my deafness. Thou didst gleam, and glow, and dispell my blindness. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for Thy peace. For Thyself Thou hast made us, and restless our hearts until in Thee they find their ease. Late have I loved Thee, Thou Beauty ever old and ever new. Thou hast burst my bonds asunder; unto Thee will I offer up an offering of praise. ~ Saint Augustine

Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
This word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go. ~ Margaret Atwood

Medical journals from 1905 to 1915 are rife with articles on "vibratory massage" and the many things it cures. Weakened hearts and floating kidneys. Hysterical cramp of the esophagus and catarrh of the inner ear. Deafness, cancer, bad eyesight. And lots and lots of prostate problems. A Dr. Courtney W. Shropshire, writing in 1912, was impressed to note that by means of "a special prostatic applicator, well lubricated, attached to the vibrator, introduced to the rectum" he was "able to empty the seminal vesicles of their secretions." Indeedy. Shropshire's patients returned every other day for treatment, no doubt also developing a relationship with the vibration machine. ~ Mary Roach

You of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us? What is there around us that we cannot - ~ Frank Herbert

For this entire walk, my desire had ashamed me, as if my wanting to be kissed that night mitigated the fault of Junior's sudden deafness. I'd been given stacks of reasons to blame myself for an act of violence committed by another. I had blamed my flirting for his subsequent felony. My college taught me: my rape was my shame. Everyone I'd trusted asked only what I might have done to let it happen.

In my gut, I'd always believed I'd caused it.

I finally questioned it. ~ Aspen Matis

Our higher officials are fond as a rule of nonplussing their subordinates; the methods to which they have recourse to attain that end are rather various. The following means, among others, is in great vogue, 'is quite a favourite,' as the English say; a high official suddenly ceases to understand the simplest words, assuming total deafness. He will ask, for instance, What's to-day?' He is respectfully informed, 'To-day's Friday, your Ex-s-s-s-lency.' 'Eh? What? What's that? What do you say?' the great man repeats with intense attention. 'To-day's Friday, your Ex - s - s - lency.' 'Eh? What? What's Friday? What Friday?' 'Friday, your Ex - s - s - s - lency, the day of the week.' 'What, do you pretend to teach me, eh? ~ Ivan Turgenev

When humanity's deafness to simple common sense is allowed to reign, the implications for the world can only be catastrophic. ~ Robert H. Lieberman