Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
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 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.
We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old - and that's the criterion by which I'll be selecting my judges.
One of the reasons the doctors gave for hospitalizing me against my will was that I was 'gravely disabled.' To support this view, they wrote in my chart that I was unable to do my Yale Law School homework. I wondered what that meant about much of the rest of New Haven.
I'm proud that I can represent, within Cyborg, a couple of different groups. One being people of color, but also, Cyborg is a superhero that is in many ways disabled. So, being able to give representation from that end as well is something that's really powerful to me.
I figure this current era of history is the one with the best chance of quality of life for a black, female, disabled, middle-aged, queer person who's most comfortable not fitting in. The odds still aren't great, mind you. But I'll take my chances with the 21st century.
I come from a blue-collar family. My father worked at the American Can Company as a mechanic. He broke his back and was disabled, and the first memory I have of him is in the hospital. My mother was a working mother - she had two jobs. Everybody in the house had to help out.
We do need more deaf people in Hollywood. But I don't think that deaf people always have to play a deaf role. I think we can play different roles. We need to see more diversity period. More people of color. More disabled people. More gender diversity. All kinds of diversity.
The sentiment of those suggesting the Olympics and Paralympics be combined is no doubt well intentioned. But it also echoes the myth that disabled people want to be other than what we are - that we'd like nothing more than to be 'allowed in' with the able-bodied competitors.
I don't want retired schoolteachers or any other good Americans to be duped by fraudulent organizations into giving money, thinking it is going to go to disabled vets, when in fact it's not at all. It's going in to pad the pockets of some scam artists. I want to stop this stuff.
A lot of people don't want to hire disabled actors. They think you're going to take twice as long over a shot, or they don't want have to put up a ramp for disabled access. They think, 'Why would I do that when I can just hire an able-bodied actor to play the disabled character?'
I think a person who is disabled should be disabled by no act of their own. If you become disabled because of alcoholism, drugs, or things of that nature, I do not think those conditions qualify someone to be called disabled. I think those conditions result from personal decisions.
My half-sister was born without a cerebellum and is completely disabled. She is my biggest motivator and inspiration, because her situation makes me realize how special life is, and I always want to work twice as hard, enjoy life twice as much so that I can enjoy it for her as well.
I say the law should be blind to race, gender and sexual orientation, just as it claims to be blind to wealth and power. There should be no specially protected groups of any kind, except for children, the severely disabled and the elderly, whose physical frailty demands society's care.
In a television interview, I said that diversity in our children's books should include the adventures of disabled children, travellers and gipsies, LGBT teens, different cultures, classes, colours, religions. It shouldn't be a token gesture, nor do such stories need to be 'issue-based'.
It's difficult to learn to play these different disabled characters - Campbell in 'Switched At Birth' was paralysed from the waist down - but it's nice to be able to step into their world and live in these characters' shoes and to be able to play them, because it gives you a different look at life.
Our country's history is a generation-spanning journey to effectuate the notion that 'all men are created equal' for the members of our ever-expanding national family: women, African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, gays and lesbians, the disabled, immigrants, and refugees.
The rapid growth of prenatal testing has had some undeniably positive effects: A woman who knows she will bear a child with a handicap can plan to deliver in a hospital equipped for risky births. And many couples prefer the opportunity to prepare psychologically for the work of raising a disabled child.
If Deja wasn't my sister, I feel like I would still be motivated but not in the way that I am today. Having a disabled sister, that's a lot more motivation, especially when she tells you growing up that she wishes she can be out there with the kids playing and she wishes she can be out there running around.
When President Trump promised we would get better, cheaper health care that would fix the problems of the Affordable Care Act, I hoped it was true. Unfortunately, the American Healthcare Act promises giant cuts to the programs that I and every other poor, sick and disabled person have relied on for our lives.
While many employers do the right thing and provide flexible schedules for disabled veterans, I felt that it was important to provide all disabled veterans with a solution that would help them have access to medical leave. Here's how our bill works: we accelerate the eligibility process for disabled veterans.
I always say I'm one of the most normal abnormal people you'll ever meet. I get embarrassed about how many medals I've won, and I get angry when people presume that because you're gay you've got to wear pink and stilettos and camp it up, or that if you're disabled you should act like a victim and not have a life.
Once you are born with a handicap, even if the handicap is resolved - as it was in my case - you are left with the benefit of having had it. By contrast, my mother - who had nothing bad happen to her - was a very disabled person. She was an appalling human being who squandered every blessing that God had given her.
People understand the tremendous sacrifices that veterans have made - and they instinctively want to do something for them. And that sometimes leads people to give veterans an excuse: Oh, you didn't show up for work on time. It must be that you have posttraumatic stress disorder. Oh, you're disabled. Don't even try.
My brother-in-law, Chuck, whom I have known since we were teenagers, is a disabled veteran who was wounded while fighting with the marines in Vietnam. I've been around to observe how the war affected his life and the problems that veterans have, and I knew for a long time that I wanted to write a song about Vietnam.
It boggles my mind that the same people who cry 'foul' about rationing an instant later argue to reduce health care benefits for the needy, to defund crucial programs of care and prevention, and to shift thousands of dollars of annual costs to people - elders, the poor, the disabled - who are least able to bear them.
Flexible working is not just for women with children. It is necessary at the other end of the scale. If people can move into part-time work, instead of retirement, then that will be a huge help. If people can fit their work around caring responsibilities for the elderly, the disabled, then again that's very positive.
Someone must transform income into the food, shelter, clothing, nurture, discipline, education, minding, nursing, transportation, and emotional support that creates life outside of the office, permits survival of the race, cares for the ill and disabled, and makes life livable when we can no longer care for ourselves.
I am so proud of being a Paralympian because I think the Games are a very good platform for disabled persons to perform themselves. Within the Paralympics movement, it's not just talk about excellence; it's not just talk about the competition. It's also talk about the equality and how your world accepts those disabled people.
If you help disabled children, it's very appealing. If you help kids with cancer, those are the things you get credit for and those things are beautiful. But when it comes to stopping violence or really putting the time into rebuilding schools, that's just a different kind of project. It takes more than just money to do that.
I did a show in Germany, and some kid - he was disabled - he was actually in a wheelchair, and he came out to my show, and he couldn't get across to me what he was trying to say, and you could see that he was frustrated because he couldn't fully express himself, and I just felt like, 'Wow, he's just really passionate about me.'
Looking after a disabled child pushes you to the limits of what you can cope with... physically, emotionally. It's because there's this baby, this child that you love more than you can possibly imagine, in some way more than a normal child because you worry about them 24 hours a day. But at the same time you are so, so proud of them.
I used to work with mentally disabled people when I was 18 or 19, changing diapers and catheters. I was working, like, 16 hour night shifts, having to distribute meds and go capture people who would break out of the house. Sometimes they'd have seizures, and we'd have to rush them to the hospital. That was an interesting time, very humbling.
