Disability Quotes - Page 2

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

Suffering is so real & I walk amongst so many who have no idea how much my soul is aching to be healed.

Dreams are like living things; they can grow, they can suffer disabilities, they can have deficiency diseases and they can also die off when they meet unfavourable and favourable conditions respectively.

Israelmore Ayivor

I learn so much that I previously did not know about the world of the immobile that it is hard to believe it all takes place over a few hours. At random: I learn about the casual indifference of the London cabbie to the wheelchair user and that the clearance on accessible entrances is measured in millimetres less than a knuckle. I learn how intractable it is to push a grown man around for hours and how spontaneity is the privilege of the able-bodied. In solid counterpart to all this grief, I learn about the lengths nurses are prepared to go to assist a purely recreational and ambitious project by one of their patients.

You can’t be beaten by something you laugh at.

Jonathan Harnisch

The worst disability in life is a bad attitude.

I lost all I had known and gained a life I was yet to know.

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

Cosmopolitanism seeks a _we_ that does not rely on the exclusion of _others_ but, instead, recognizes and confirms each other as part of the planetary _we_. The cosmopolitan _we_ is not grounded in a monolithic sameness but in a constant alterity and _ethical singularity_ of each individual human person regardless of one's national origin and belonging, religious affiliation, gender, race and ethnicity, class ability, or sexuality.

It's not that there are no challenges to becoming a vegetarian or vegan, but in the media, including authors of popular books on food and food politics, contribute to the 'enfreakment' of what is so often patronizingly referred to as the vegan or vegetarian 'lifestyle.' But again, the marginalization of those who care about animals is nothing new. Diane Beers writes in her book For the Prevention of Cruelty: The History and Legacy of Animal Rights Activism in the United States that 'several late nineteenth-century physicians concocted a diagnosable for of mental illness to explain such bizarre behavior. Sadly, they pronounced these misguided souls suffered from "zoophilpsychosis."' As Beers describes, zoophilpsychosis (an excessive concern for animals) was more likely to be diagnosed in women, who were understood to be 'particularly susceptible to the malady.' As the early animal advocacy movement in Britain and the United States was largely made up of women, such charges worked to uphold the subjugation both of women and of nonhuman animals.

The lingerie department is the only one that she can reach in her wheelchair. Nevertheless, she is fired the next day because of complaints that a woman who is so obviously not sexually attractive selling alluring nightgowns makes customers uncomfortable. Daunted by her dismissal, she seeks consolation in the arms of the young manager and soon finds herself pregnant. Upon learningof this news, he leaves her for anondisabled woman with a fullerbustline and better homemaking skills in his inaccessible kitchen.

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

Can the child who is Dell; be the outer emoodiment of man's quest to save himself? To cure himself?...Or, to "be" himself?

Milkweed L. Augustine

Our culture teaches that sex is for the sexy, and the only way to be sexy is to be pretty. No wait--that's still too weak. Sex should properly arise from sexiness. For unsexy people--fat people, old people, funny-looking people, disabled people--to even feel sexual desire is inappropriate, perverse, disgusting. For them to engage in sexual display is offensive. For them to have sex...well, there oughta be a law.

I saw a documentary about prostitution in Holland a few years ago, that said over there health insurance actually pays for monthly visits to a prostitute for the disabled, because they feel that sex is part of a healthy life, so unmarried disabled men have a right to have sex, even if it's with a paid prostitute. Pretty bizarre, huh? Can you imagine a US health insurance company picking up the bill for your romp in the hay with a hooker?

Oliver Markus Malloy

Discrimination is the most polite word for abuse aka denying equal opportunity by anyone in power based on age, ancestry, color, disability (mental and physical), exercising the right to family care and medical leave, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, military or veteran status, national origin, political affiliation, race, religious creed, sex (includes pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and related medical conditions), and sexual orientation.

My ability is greater than my disability.

Theres a remarkable amount of strength residing in those who move forward without being able to physically move. Ones that carry the weight of illness or a disability, they battle wars most know nothing about. They are the true warriors of the world, the ones who have every reason to quit but never do.

I thought having a chronic illness would make my life detour in ways I didn't want to accept, but I've learnt that have a chronic illness made the only detours that are worth the growth.

A clear line of distinctness must be drawn between the environment of the body and the environment of the mind or both the body and the mind be regarded as intertwined and be deprived of strength and efficiency. When the body is in crises, the mind must not be and when the mind is in crises, the body must not be. Such is tenacity and nimbleness

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Next to God, Family is the best thing.

I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq.

Nobody can see pain. They have no frame of reference for pain that's happening to someone else. They can only see inactivity - which they interpret as laziness.

Elizabeth Haynes

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

For a long time I spent my weary days in a fog of what might be and what has been and I guess you could say im still learning how to accept what is.

If the history of the last century taught us the dangers of empowering governments to determine genetic “fitness” (i.e., which person fits within the triangle, and who lives outside it), then the question that confronts our current era is what happens when this power devolves to the individual. It is a question that requires us to balance the desires of the individual— to carve out a life of happiness and achievement, without undue suffering— with the desires of a society that, in the short term, may be interested only in driving down the burden of disease and the expense of disability. And operating silently in the background is a third set of actors: our genes themselves, which reproduce and create new variants oblivious of our desires and compulsions— but, either directly or indirectly, acutely or obliquely, influence our desires and compulsions. Speaking at the Sorbonne in 1975, the cultural historian Michel Foucault once proposed that “a technology of abnormal individuals appears precisely when a regular network of knowledge and power has been established.” Foucault was thinking about a “regular network” of humans. But it could just as easily be a network of genes.

Siddhartha Mukherjee

Whether someone is useful only matters if you value people by their use.

If he could not go out into the world, the world could come to him.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

I guess it's human nature to question yourself, to question why all the pain has had to happen? sometimes there isn't any answers it just is what it is and how we make ourselves feel and see through that, is what will determine how we move forward.

In fact, his travelogues spend amazingly little time discussing his blindness. Only one passage stands out for its frank discussion of his handicap and how it changed his worldview. In it, Holman was reminiscing about a few rendezvous from his past. Disarmingly, he admitted that he had no idea what his paramours looked like, or even whether they were homely. Moreover, he didn't care: by abandoning the standards of the sighted world, he argues, he could tap into a more divine and more authentic beauty. Hearing a woman's voice and feeling her caresses -- and then filling in what was missing with his own fancy -- gave him more pleasure than the mere sight of a women ever had, he said, a pleasure beyond reality. "Are there any who imagine," Holman asked, "that my loss of eyesight must necessarily deny me the enjoyment of such contemplation? How much more do I pity the mental darkness which could give rise to such an error.

Sam Kean

Some disabled people spend a significant amount of their energy on trying to come across as abled or as not that disabled.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Some people wouldn’t still be sane, if they were not religious or superstitious; some wouldn’t be disabled or dead.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

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

God's time is slow, patient, and kind and welcomes friendship; it is a way of being in the fullness of time that is not determined by productivity, success, or linear movements toward personal goals. It is a way of love, a way of the heart.

Your attitude will either make or break you, we cannot change fate and the tragedies that enter our lives but we can choose how we want them to change us.

It takes a lot of confidence, and self-love and self-worth to realize that you are capable. And that you have every right to leave your lane, and to do things in the same way that other people do.

You really don't have to subscribe to the life that had been written for you.

The thought of being able to [move my arms] made me want to give up my legs [instead] since I was accustomed to using them. But, I figured that after a few hours of sitting in a wheelchair...I would switch back...in a flash.

Sarah Todd Hammer

The weekend was a much-needed breath of fresh air; Monday always seemed to not only take that breath right back, but add a few extra pounds to my shoulders as well.

Jennifer Starzec

Dancing with a spinal cord injury is a challenge like no other, but I aspired to prove to myself that I could still be phenomenal dancer even with an SCI

Sarah Todd Hammer

People who don't see you every day have a hard time understanding how on some days--good days--you can run three miles, but can barely walk across the parking lot on other days,' [my mom] said quietly.

Jennifer Starzec

I often wished that more people understood the invisible side of things. Even the people who seemed to understand, didn't really.

Jennifer Starzec

The video was still playing, although I didn't know why. It seemed as if the able-bodied dancers were mocking me.

Sarah Todd Hammer

I had learned quickly that life doesn't always go the way I want it to, and that's okay. I still plod on.

Sarah Todd Hammer

Now, Woolf calls her fictional bastion of male privilege Oxbridge, so I'll call mine Yarvard. Even though she cannot attend Yarvard because she is a woman, Judith cheerfully applies for admission at, let's call it, Smithcliff, a prestigious women's college. She is denied admission on the grounds thatthe dorms and classrooms can'taccommodate wheelchairs, that her speech pattern would interfere with her elocution lessons, and that her presence would upset the other students. There is also the suggestion that she is not good marriage material for the men at the elite college to which Smithcliff is a bride-supplying "sister school." The letter inquires as to why she hasn't been institutionalized.When she goes to the administration building to protest the decision, she can't get up the flight of marble steps on the Greek Revival building. This edifice was designed to evoke a connection to the Classical world, which practiced infanticide of disabled newborns.

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

I am conscious of a soul-sense that lifts me above the narrow, cramping circumstances of my life. My physical limitations are forgotten- my world lies upward, the length and the breadth and the sweep of the heavens are mine!

A seemingly simple task like taking a bath or wearing a condom feels like multitasking to someone who suffers from hemiplegia or has only one hand.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Boredom is probably more frequent and more tormenting if you do not have sight or hands.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The most upsetting thing about Society’s attitude towards disabled people is that many millions of disabled people became disabled while trying to please Society, the very same bitch that secretly regards them as subhuman.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

It has been said that life has treated me harshly; and sometimes I have complained in my heart because many pleasures of human experience have been withheld from me…if much has been denied me, much, very much, has been given me…

That made love—not grace—the magic ingredient. Then anew thought hit her. Perhaps love was grace. A shiver wentup her spine. What did that make anger? The antithesis ofgrace?

Penelope Marzec

Beware trying to iron out all your quirks, perceived flaws and doubts. It's often these things that help you find strength, compassion, empathy for others and heart.

Rasheed Ogunlaru

Part of the problem with the word 'disabilities' is that it immediately suggests an inability to see or hear or walk or do other things that many of us take for granted. But what of people who can't feel? Or talk about their feelings? Or manage their feelings in constructive ways? What of people who aren't able to form close and strong relationships? And people who cannot find fulfillment in their lives, or those who have lost hope, who live in disappointment and bitterness and find in life no joy, no love? These, it seems to me, are the real disabilities.