Disability Quotes

Healing severe or chronic pain, I believe, includes transforming our relationship to the pain, and, ultimately, it is about transforming our relationship to who we are and to life. ~ Sarah Anne Shockley

Stop thinking of me as broken or not whole. Put that bullshit down and walk away. It's not doing you any good and it's insulting to me. ~ J.R. Ward

What's it like here?
There's a biscuit factory next door. We get the broken ones. ~ Hiedi Thomas Jennifer Worth

Compassion, acceptance and LOVE is the cure to MOST of the issues that plague this world. ~ Yvonne Pierre

[On being deaf:] We can never get beyond the necessity of keeping in full view the worst and the best that can be made of our lot. The worst is, either to sink under the trial, or to be made callous by it. The best is, to be as wise as is possible under a great disability, and as happy as is possible under a great privation. ~ Harriet Martineau

Glen had a disability more disfiguring than a burn and more terrifying than cancer.
Glen had been born on the day after Christmas.
"My parents just combine my birthday with Christmas, that's all," he explained.
But we knew this was a lie. Glen's parents just wrapped a couple of his Christmas presents in birthday-themed wrapping paper, stuck some candles in a supermarket cake, and had a dinner of Christmas leftovers. ~ Augusten Burroughs

I have a Disability yes that's true, but all that really means is I may have to take a slightly different path than you. ~ Robert M. Hensel

I've gained first hand knowledge of the challenges faced by people with disabilities. It's made me understand that those of us who have full use of our physical faculties owe an enormous amount of respect and sensitivity to people who don't. ~ William J. Clinton

I need to do something about college, but I'm not sure what."

"Where have you decided to apply?"

"Nowhere yet. Any time I think about the schools I've visited, I feel overwhelmed. The campuses are so big that I know I'll get lost. I dread making new friends. And the professors acted too busy to deal with someone like me. My parents will be wasting a huge amount of money."

"Your fears are no different than most high school seniors." He studied me thoughtfully. "Must you go to college?"

I opened my mouth to say Of course, I must - and then shut it again. The concept didn't bother me nearly as much as it should have. Skipping college would be crazy. Right? It was hard enough for a disabled person to find a job, but being disabled with no degree would make it hopeless. "I don't have a choice."

"Perhaps you have more choices than you realize. ~ Elizabeth Langston

Near the end of Love's Labor, Eva Feder Kittay (1999, 154) writes that a fundamental aspect of a just society is related to the conditions and limits of mothering. In a just society, women with disabilities can mother because there is adequate emotional and material support for them to do so, and given a context of support and approval to reproduce, they can also choose not to bear children. In a just society, mothers of children with disability can mother, and they, their children, and other needed caregivers will be adequately supported." (15) ~ Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson And Jen Cellio

Strange how knowing our story had no happy ending had freed us to live in the moment. We weren't guy and girl. We weren't damaged and terminal. We were just now. ~ Elizabeth Langston

Every public elementary school ought to welcome Good News Clubs. Parents appreciate them; children love them; and the First Amendment protects them. The First Amendment requires that similar groups be provided with equal treatment. Religious speech is not a disability. It is our preeminent freedom. ~ Mathew Staver

Sometimes I wonder if I'm as famous for my wheelchair and disabilities as I am for my discoveries. ~ Stephen Hawking

A young pregnant wife has been hospitalized for a simple attack of appendicitis. The doctors had to apply ice to her stomach and when the treatments ended the doctors suggested that she abort the child, they told her it was the 'best solution' because the baby would be born with some disability but the young brave wife decided not to abort, and the child was born. That woman was my Mother and I was the child. ~ Andrea Bocelli

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. ~ Ross W. Greene

The Grand Mistake in Education - To think that what's right for you is right for everyone. IT AIN'T. The Fly in this Ointment!http://youtu.be/6HpXUaQGY8I via @youtube ~ Alan Share

Go to war, come home as a sickened veteran, and be denied your earned disability payments to live a life of extreme poverty and hardship. ~ Steven Magee

But Leon wasn't due any disability. Wasn't, their mother said, like he could claim to have caught the dumbfuck there. Not ~ William Gibson

Whether you're gay or straight, with a physical disability, your skin's a different color, it's absurd in this age to not be aware and be concerned of the inequity in rights. ~ Carson Kressley

The Bradford appetite was a disability, damn it and should be treated as such. ~ R.L. Mathewson

Because of how rarely our privilege is examined, even our social justice movements will tend to focus on the most privileged and most well represented people within those groups. Anti-racism groups will often tend to prioritize the needs of straight men of color, feminist groups will tend to prioritize the needs of white women, LGBTQ groups will tend to prioritize the needs of white gay cisgender men, disability rights groups will tend to prioritize the needs of disabled white men...Because the needs of the most privileged are usually the ones prioritized, they are often the only ones considered when discussing solutions to oppression and inequality. These solutions, not surprisingly, often leave the underprivileged populations in our movements behind. ~ Ijeoma Oluo

The stereotype of the supercrip, in the eyes of its critics, represents a sort of overachieving, overdetermined self-enfreakment that distracts from the lived daily reality of most disabled people. ~ Jose Alaniz

But nobody writes fairy tales
about the ugly and poems
are not there for the broken
and I will never find myself
in the words of a hymn
nor will any whispered prayer
ever say my name
(which name, which me
am I looking for?)
because I am shouting
at a cross splintered into pieces
by my angry fists, and crying
at the stained glass falling
like killing rain around me. ~ Miriam Joy

Disability is a matter of perception. If you can do just one thing well, you're needed by someone. ~ Martina Navratilova

During the 1980s, in California, a large number of Cambodian women went to their doctors with the same complaint: they could not see. The women were all war refugees. Before fleeing their homeland, they had witnessed the atrocities for which the Khmer Rouge, which had been in power from 1975 to 1979, was well known. Many of the women had been raped or tortured or otherwise brutalized. Most had seen family members murdered in front of them. One woman, who never again saw her husband and three children after soldiers came and took them away, said that she had lost her sight after having cried every day for four years. She was not the only one who appeared to have cried herself blind. Others suffered from blurred or partial vision, their eyes troubled by shadows and pains.

The doctors examined the women - about a hundred and fifty in all - found that their eyes were normal. Further tests showed that their brains were normal as well. If the women were telling the truth - and there were some who doubted this, who thought the women might be malingering because they wanted attention or were hoping to collect disability - the only explanation was psychosomatic blindness.

In other words, the women's minds, forced to take in so much horror and unable to take more, had managed to turn out the lights. ~ Sigrid Nunez

I'm not going to be one of those amputees who dances and everyone finds inspiring. I'm not inspiring. I'm just me. ~ Katherine Locke

We who are old know that age is more than a disability. It is an intense and varied experience, almost beyond our capacity at times, but something to be carried high. ~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

I think when you have a disability people are always putting limitations on you, telling you, even in a nice way, what you can't do. My attitude to that has always been: You can't tell me that. I'll show you. ~ Louise Sauvage

It's not a disability, it's life. We are complicated creatures with larger matters on our plate than tip calculation. I grew up watching TV with my mother while she diagnosed the characters as having hyperactivity or attention-deficit disorder. I rolled my eyes and wondered why there weren't any stupid kids anymore. Why did there have to be something to explain everyone? Were the cave people on Ritalin? I didn't think so. ~ Sloane Crosley

Disability is not predictive of the happiness of either the parent or the child, which reflects the larger puzzle that people who have won the lottery are, in the long run and on average, only marginally happier than amputees - people in each category having adjusted rather quickly to their new normal. ~ Andrew Solomon

Paralympic sport and other disability sport can and should be celebrated in its own right. ~ Stella Young

disability rights and to demand full access. Ed Roberts and others at the University of California Berkeley in the 1960s forced the university to admit them, to provide access to classes and other activities, and to provide the support ~ Julie K. Silver

With determination, it is possible to block out the negative things and enjoy the positive ones, despite the cons. Most importantly, it is possible to dance through everything pernicious. ~ Sarah Todd Hammer

Surgeons always underestimate the pain and disability involved in what they do to people. ~ Robert Winston

Parents of medically fragile children find themselves becoming experts in lots of different areas, including laws and regulations, research and treatments, and the various specialists that support the health of their children. ~ Charisse Montgomery

She unzipped her oversized flannel onesie, created especially for women not interested in finding a man, and tossed it on the bed. ~ Kishan Paul

The task of the modern individual is to move appropriately and effectively from disengaged spectator to attentive perceiver in order to slide easily into the social order. The starer, in contrast, is an undisciplined spectator arrested in an earlier developmental stage or one resistant to the attentiveness of the modern networker. The starer is a properly attentive spectator befuddled, halted in mid-glance, mobility throttled, processing checked, network run amuck ... So the challenge of proper looking is converting the impulse to stare into attention, which is socially acceptable. (21-22) ~ Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

..a disability is something within you. A prejudice is something within the
employer.

..don't look at yourself through their eyes. Look at yourself through your own eyes. ~ Richard N. Bolles

Childhood vaccines are one of the great triumphs of modern medicine. Indeed, parents whose children are vaccinated no longer have to worry about their child's death or disability from whooping cough, polio, diphtheria, hepatitis, or a host of other infections. ~ Ezekiel Emanuel

I thank God for my handicaps. For through them, I have found myself, my work and my God. ~ Helen Keller

It's hard, too, to acknowledge that I feel this way while also simultaneously existing in a place of enormous privilege. My disability affects all aspects of my life, but it is also relatively mild. ~ Amanda Leduc

To find magic in the mending. ~ Marieke Nijkamp

But I live here, in this place. And I don't know how to tell you that. I don't want you to squirm, or take my hand and say it's tragic. I don't want you to roll your eyes as though I'm playing a macho game of one-upmanship: My pain can beat up everyone else's adolescent pain, so I'll just be over here in the corner, savoring the depths of my stoic suffering and shedding no more than a single tear when I listen to every single cover of "Hurt" and "Hallelujah" on repeat. No, you can't help me. Don't try to help me. Please try to help me. ~ Marieke Nijkamp

I grew up not really thinking I had a disability. I grew up thinking I had different shoes ~ Oscar Pistorius

Social Security Disability Plans: This segment of Social Security is different from the more common retirement benefit payout. Two programs are available: Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Both programs have stringent eligibility requirements. ~ Michele Tagliati

Acceptance is a deceptive word. It suggests compliance, a consenting to my condition and to who I have become. This form of acceptance is often seen as weakness, submission. We say I accept my punishment. Or I accept your decision. But such assent, while passive in essence, does provide the stable, rocklike foundation for coping with a condition that will not go away. It is a powerful passivity, the Zen of Illness, that allows for endurance. ~ Floyd Skloot

There's a kind of sick security some people get out of keeping away from people with disabilities. They are running away from any situation that's not totally pure and all-American and that requires them to do any thinking. ~ Major Owens

The mere thought of her with another man is enough to drive me fucking insane. So, yeah, I'm not saying any of that bullshit about how my disability makes me a lesser man. Because it doesn't. Not for the most part. I'm just saying that she could definitely be better. ~ Annie Arcane

You're not disabled by the disabilities you have, you are able by the abilities you have. ~ Oscar Pistorius

The strong, ferocious wind just made the chill worse, and as it blew around me, electric bursts of pain shot through my body. ~ Jennifer Starzec

Hoping to settle the wheelchair matter once and for all, Graham dragged his chief of construction, his chief of architecture, and a film crew out to Dulles Airport, whose escalators were approximately the same width as those planned for Metro. There he produced a variety of braces and crutches. As the cameras rolled, Graham rode up and down the escalators using one aid after another, climaxing by riding both directions in a wheelchair, facing up each time. Graham clearly believed he had proved beyond doubt that 'it is entirely possible, easily and safely, for wheelchair travelers to use escalators.' His aides watched in disbelief; a fit and fearless major general in his fifties hardly represented the disabled population, whatever braces he strapped to his legs. All he had proved, concluded the WMATA architect Sprague Thresher, was that 'if everybody who had to use a wheelchair was Jack Graham, we wouldn't need elevators. ~ Zachary M. Schrag

Entrepreneurs with disabilities are overwhelmingly successful. ~ David Brenner

The only true disability is the inability to accept and respect differences. ~ Tanya Masse

I believe we need more culturally diverse books - about disabled characters, though not about their disability, about people with different sexual orientations, or a boy who is a cross-dresser. We need to reflect the diversity of our society. ~ Malorie Blackman

Every disability conceals a vocation, if only we can find it, which will 'turn the necessity to glorious gain. ~ C.S. Lewis

Let me be clear - I want all Louisiana citizens to have choice - including the elderly and persons with disabilities - and their families - who rely on the state for their care. ~ Kathleen Blanco

As 1968 began to ebb into 1969, however, and as "anticlimax" began to become a real word in my lexicon, another term began to obtrude itself. People began to intone the words "The Personal is The Political." At the instant I first heard this deadly expression, I knew as one does from the utterance of any sinister bullshit that it was - cliché is arguably forgiven here - very bad news. From now on it would be enough to be a member of a sex or gender, or epidermal subdivision, or even erotic "preference," to qualify as a revolutionary. In order to begin a speech or ask a question from the floor, all that would be necessary by way of preface would be the words: "Speaking as a..." The could follow any self-loving description. I will have to say this much for the old "hard" Left: we earned our claim to speak and intervene by right of experience and sacrifice and work. It would never have done for any of us to stand up and say that our sex or sexuality pr pigmentation or disability were qualifications in themselves. There are many ways of dating the moment when The Left lost - or I would prefer to say, discarded its moral advantage, but this was the first time that I was to see the sellout conducted so cheaply. ~ Christopher Hitchens

In life you have a choice: Bitter or Better? Choose better, forget bitter. ~ Nick Vujicic

I can't change it, That was God's plan for my life and I'm going to go with it. ~ Bethany Hamilton

What would happen, they conjectured, if they simply went on assuming their children would do everything. Perhaps not quickly. Perhaps not by the book. But what if they simply erased those growth and development charts, with their precise, constricting points and curves? What if they kept their expectations but erased the time line? What harm could it do? Why not try? ~ Kim Edwards

He couldn't work, as such, but needed to flex himself somehow in ways that felt like work, he thought. Lacking credentials and sight he could not teach, for example. Even reading a cold-call script would be out, although he'd heard of a resourceful blind man who went to the social security office and suggested, "Give me either a job or just my damned check," and received the former, skillfully handling mediation assignments. ~ Edward Hoagland

If you are deaf, you need captions for spoken elements. If you are blind, you need voiced descriptions of Web contents and spoken renderings of e-mail. The range of physical disabilities is very large, and we need many different tools to overcome the consequential barriers to Internet use. Let us commit ourselves to truly assuring that the Internet really is for everyone. ~ Vinton Cerf

It's not our disabilities, it's our abilities that count. ~ Chris Burke

I want people to feel inspired to reach out and be inclusive and supportive of others in their community who might be facing any kind of challenge, whether it is a health issue or a disability. ~ Avril Lavigne

Goddamn himself for letting his independence slip away from him. He didn't even know how it had happened, how he had lost the ability to function on his own, or what the hell he was going to do about it now. ~ Kimberly Gardner

There was a lot of pain in that kiss. There was so much hurt and so much fear in it. I felt tears rolling down the both of our faces. But, in that kiss, there was even more want. We both wanted to smother out that pain, to not have so many horrible things in the all too recent past, to just be normal, to do the types of things we were supposed to be dealing with besides death and disability. ~ Keary Taylor

The battle to find a workplace that's wheelchair accessible is a feat in itself, let alone an employer who's going to be cool about employing someone with a disability in a job you actually want to do. ~ Stella Young

I have suffered from bullying in many ways, from bullying in school due to my disability in reading, to digital abuse that I deal with on a daily basis. I'd like to tell the kids that are being bullied that no one should have to deal with the abuse, ever! ~ Bella Thorne

It [i.e. disability justice] means we are not left behind; we are beloved, kindred, needed. ~ Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

There is no greater disability in society, than the inability to see a person as more. ~ Robert M. Hensel

Disability is something imposed on top of our impairments by the way we are unnecessarily isolated and excluded from full participation in society ~ Lennard J. Davis

Some would look at Emily's life and think that a child born with Down's syndrome has little hope for a meaningful life. Throw in the diagnosis of leukemia and that little hope turns into no hope whatsoever.
I disagree.
Emily's life, with all its imperfections, had great meaning. Because of how many people she touched, I realize that we are far more than what we can accomplish. We are the very thumbprints of God. ~ Matt Patterson

The percentage of people qualifying for federal disability benefits because they are unable to work rose from 0.7 percent of the size of the labor force in 1960 to 5.3% in 2010. ~ Charles Murray

Remission is not a cure. It's an adjective of disability. ~ Christy Leigh Stewart

You get used to it. And that surprises me. You get used to diminishment, to a body that is stalled, an impediment? Well, yes, you do. An alter ego is amazed, aghast perhaps--myself in the roaring forties, when robust health was an assumption, a given, something you barely noticed because it was always there. Acceptance has set in, somehow, has crept up on you, which is just as well, because the alternative--perpetual rage and resentment--would not help matters. You are now this other person, your earlier selves are out there, familiar, well remembered, but you have to come to terms with a different incarnation. ~ Penelope Lively

My disability exists not because I use a wheelchair, but because the broader environment isn't accessible. ~ Stella Young

The reality that the (intellectually disabled) person is a version of myself is one from which so much can be learned and gained, and yet, it is a reality which most people deny and try to escape from. ~ Wolf Wolfensberger

At first my father's job was clearing ruins. He had filed a sharp protest, however, justifying his disability over ten pages of closely spaced handwriting, buttressed by statements from witnesses and discharge papers from clinics for nervous diseases. His arguments were irrefutable, particularly if we take into consideration--aside from the actual facts--his polemical tone and his brilliant style. 'I hereby state for the attention of the esteemed Commissarist,' he wrote in his appeal, 'in connection with Item A-2, in which I took the liberty of citing the causes of my total incapacity and proving--if in a very sensible fashion--my abnormality as well as my complete mental and physical worthlessness, the worthlessness of a neurotic and alcoholic incapable of taking care of his family or himself, I hereby state, therefore, with a view to the most specific information possible on this matter, although each and every one of the aforementioned matters is in itself a physical amputation, I am stating that I am also flat-footed, a certificate to which effect I am appending from the draft board at Zalaegerszeg, by which I am exempt from military service by virtue of 100 percent flat-footedness. . . ~ Danilo Kis

It's the thing I struggle with every day: the mental diligence and stamina needed to sit in front of the computer, open the file, start writing and to keep doing so, word after word, until I've created the next story. A combination of learning disability and chronic health issues make that the hardest thing for me. ~ Nalo Hopkinson

IMPAIRMENT: Lacking part or all of…or having a defective limb, organism or mechanism of the body

DISABILITY: The disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by a contemporary social organization which takes no or little account of people who have physical [and/or cognitive/developmental/mental] impairments and thus excludes them from the mainstream of society.
~ ~ Mike Oliver

If only one fifth of your spells work you have real power. If only one fifth of your divinations work you have a serious disability. ~ Peter J. Carroll

Death. Starvation. Blindness. Another grim day in our village. ~ Richelle Mead

Dad would call it my Sisyphus toll. Push a boulder up a hill, pretending it's okay, and come nightfall it - and I - come crashing down. But he forgets the view each time I make it to the top. ~ Marieke Nijkamp

The last thing you ever want to do is extend the period of frailty and disability and make people unhealthy for a longer time period. So lifespan extension in and of itself should not be the goal of medicine, nor should it be the goal of public health, nor should it be the goal of aging science. ~ S. Jay Olshansky

The prevention of death and disability, the relief of pain and suffering, the restoration of functioning: these are the aims of health care. Beyond its tangible benefits, health care touches on countless important and in some ways mysterious aspects of personal life and invest it with significant value as a thing in itself. ~ Martin Gulliford

The body as home, but only if it is understood that bodies are never singular, but rather haunted, strengthened, underscored by countless other bodies. ~ Eli Clare

I've met so many parents of the kids who are on the low end of the autism spectrum, kids who are diametrically opposed to Jacob, with his Asperger's. They tell me I'm lucky to have a son who's verbal, who is blisteringly intelligent, who can take apart the broken microwave and have it working again an hour later. They think there is no greater hell than having a son who is locked in his own world, unaware that there's a wider one to explore. But try having a son who is locked in his own world and still wants to make a connection. A son who tries to be like everyone else but truly doesn't know how. ~ Jodi Picoult

As a disabled man, let my life be a reflection of the endless amount of ability that exists in each and everyone of us. ~ Robert M. Hensel

I'm determined not to be any less than someone with two working legs."

"If only people didn't all have to rub that crippled leg in my face as if it were a sin. That's the part that bothers me the most. I didn't do anything wrong – something wrong happened to me. ~ Sarah K.L. Wilson

Fear is a bigger disability than having no arms and no legs. ~ Nick Vujicic

I mean, I may not hold the record in cleaning house either, but if I've got old milk cartons that smell like maggots I bundle them up and put them out."
"I'm on a disability pension'" he said. "I'm socially incompetent. ~ Stieg Larsson

There are millions of people out there who live this way, and their hearts are breaking just like mine. It's okay to say, "My kid is a drug addict or alcoholic, and I still love them and I'm still proud of them." Hold your head up and have a cappuccino. Take a trip. Hang your Christmas lights and hide colored eggs. Cry, laugh, then take a nap. And when we all get to the end of the road, I'm going to write a story that's so happy it's going to make your liver explode. It's going to be a great day. ~ Dina Kucera

The older Mario gets, the more confused he gets about the fact that everyone at E.T.A. over the age of about Kent Blott finds stuff that's really real uncomfortable and they get embarrassed. It's like there's some rule that real stuff can only get mentioned if everybody rolls their eyes or laughs in a way that isn't happy. The worst-feeling thing that happened today was at lunch when Michael Pemulis told Mario he had an idea for setting up a Dial-a-Prayer telephone service for atheists in which the atheist dials the number and the line just rings and rings and no one answers. It was a joke and a good one, and Mario got it; what was unpleasant was that Mario was the only one at the big table whose laugh was a happy laugh; everybody else sort of looked down like they were laughing at somebody with a disability. The whole issue was far above Mario's head ... ~ David Foster Wallace

Spirituality is not a disability - it is a phenomenal empowerment of life. ~ Jaggi Vasudev

Be mindful and prevent possible conflict surrounding your belongings. Aging often produces a waning of energy, and sadly, not all of us will maintain a sound mind. Possible disability, mental or physical, can relegate sorting and dispersing one's belongings to someone else who might not want the job. ~ Lisa J. Shultz

I can get motivated seeing a kid at my son's school overcome a learning disability. ~ Jason Alexander

Behind the disability, we have a heart and a mind. ~ Matthew Kenslow

The only way to ensure that our promise to provide every opportunity for students with disabilities, and help them achieve their full potential, is to give our schools the dollars they need. ~ Gordon Smith

Nobody motivates today's workers. If it doesn't come from within, it doesn't come. Fun helps remove the barriers that allow people to motivate themselves. ~ Herman Cain

Disability is not something an individual overcomes. I'm still disabled. I'm still Deafblind. People with disabilities are successful when we develop alternative techniques and our communities choose inclusion. ~ Haben Girma