Best 312 quotes in «disability quotes» category

I am afraid of the run-up to death, because I have had to watch that. But I think that many of us who are on the last lap are too busy with the baggage of old age to waste much time anticipating the finishing line. We have to get used to being the person we are, the person we have always been, but encumbered now with various indignities and disabilities, shoved as it were into some new incarnation. We feel much the same, but clearly are not. We have entered an unexpected dimension; dealing with this is the new challenge.

I am disabled but I'm not my disability. Disability is just a little piece of me but it is not my whole personality

I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive.

I calculate the breadth of Steven's shoulders, now wider than mine; watch him tear open the Blokus game he likes to play with me after school; count the hours between now and Dad coming home to take over and I am only a little afraid of the night.

I cut off all my hair, cut away at the soft curves of my clothing until I have edges once again, using my body like broken glass to slice at the world around me. I have to take something back, because I have nothing more to give. Eloi, eloi, lema sabachthani?

I do not have a disability, I have a gift! Others may see it as a disability, but I see it as a challenge. This challenge is a gift because I have to become stronger to get around it, and smarter to figure out how to use it; others should be so lucky.

If the government disability system or workers compensation system discovers that the company involved has been breaking numerous Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) laws, is it legally required to report it to OSHA?

I am not here to inspire you. I am here to tell you that we have been lied to about disability. Yeah, we've been sold the lie that disability is a Bad Thing, capital B, capital T. It's a bad thing, and to live with a disability makes you exceptional. It's not a bad thing, and it doesn't make you exceptional.

I came to know the corporate government disability system as a sick minded scam.

I can sum up the corporate government disability system with two words: Toxic Bureaucrats.

I could feel the bite of the autumn air, warning us all of the harsh winter that was on its way.

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

If we can't start by seeing an autistic child as inherently capable, interesting, and valuable, no amount of education or therapy we layer on top is going to matter.

If you have never did a mistake, then death is impossibe, but then, death is a possible mistake.

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.

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

I had never been fired out of a job until I worked at the very high altitude summit of Mauna Kea. Afterwards, I was either fired or harassed out of every job until I became so sick that I filed for disability. I later discovered that Mauna Kea is biologically toxic to the sea level adapted human.

I Have a Dream... someday my son, Zyon and ALL individuals with disabilities will be seen as HUMAN beings. I Have a Dream... someday the human & civil rights of individuals with disabilities are honored and they are treated as equals. I Have a Dream... someday ALL parents who have children with disabilities see their child as a blessing and not a burden. I Have a Dream... someday there will be more jobs and opportunities for individuals with disabilities. I Have a Dream... someday there will be UNITY "within" the disabled community. I HAVE A DREAM!!!

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.

If you apply for government disability, I wish you the best of luck...as you are going to need it!

If you become disabled in the USA and have no savings, you may be in serious trouble.

If you become disabled by occupational disease in the USA, expect to be treated like garbage by social security and workers compensation.

If you have a degree, an established career history prior to disability, and are under fifty years of age, getting on government disability is extremely hard no matter how sick you are.

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

I look down, worried something is showing after all, but if it wasn't for the incongruous absence of sensation on my left side, I wouldn't know. I look back up at her, taking a step closer because I kind of want to take a step back, and you can’t let that show. "What?" She tenses, even though I’m not even remotely close enough to, say, hit her. "I... I thought you were white." I snort, too relieved to take offense. "I'm adopted. Not my biggest problem at the moment." She smiles at me, looking a little relieved herself. "It just... it seemed a bit too... British, I guess." And it's then that I notice the slight twinge of her accent. “I am British. I was born here.” Her own skin is a light chocolate brown, light enough that it’s perfectly visible when she blushes. She looks so adorable that I almost resist, but not quite. “You have anything against Britishness?” I ask, coming to lean against the doorway on my good side, relieving the weight I have to put on the leg. “No!” she assures me. “No, it’s…” Her hands flutter nervously in front of her, like she hopes to pluck the words out of the air. “I just worry. Some people are weird about it. About me. Especially with the tutoring.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In the areas of police complaints, health and safety, disability, and corporate regulations, the government is absolutely scandalous.

I’m really tired”, you come to understand, is meaningless, giving the impression all will be well with a good rest and that if you’ve ever been tired, you know what it is to be exhausted.

In the context of the autism world (and my outlook in general) this is were I stand equality is for everyone, everybody in the world - I look at both sides of the the coin and take into account peoples realities (that makes me neutral/moderate/in the middle). That means that you look in a more three dimensional perspective of peoples diverse realities you cannot speak for all but one can learn from EACH OTHER through listening and experiencing. I also try my best to live with the good cards I was given not over-investing in my autism being the defining factor of my being (but having a healthy acknowledgement of it) that it's there but also thinking about other qualities I have such as being a writer, poet and artist. I do have disability, I do have autism and I have a "mild" learning disability that is true but I a human being first and foremost. And for someone to be seen as person equal to everyone else is a basic human right.

I pulled on the restraints, frustrated, hurting, and completely devastated. I could feel tears sliding down my skin, into my ears, and back over my scalp. Which told me that they’d cut off my hair, too. For some reason, that little bit of vanity was what it took to undo me completely.

It’d be easy to get lost here, in the spaces where I feel like a ghost. A spirit who couldn’t touch, or be touched. It’d be easy, so easy, to drown. But I keep swimming back towards the shore.

It [feminism] needs to recognise that disabled people aren’t inherently defective, but rather that non-disabled people have failed at creating a physical world that serves all.

It is disappointing to witness the corporate government disability system letting massive numbers of sickened people down during their greatest time of need.

It seemed unfair that despite the fact he could not use them, or feel them, his extremities should cause him so much discomfort.

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.

In retrospect, it seems obvious that my research about parenting was also a means to subdue my anxieties about becoming a parent.... I grew up afraid of illness and disability, inclined to avert my gaze from anyone who was too different – despite all the ways I knew myself to be different. This book helped me kill that bigoted impulse, which I had always known to be ugly. The obvious melancholy in the stories I heard should, perhaps, have made me shy away from paternity, but it had the opposite effect.

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?

It appears that workers compensation lawyers only get paid if they win their case. If your case lies outside of mainstream cases with a history of winning, they are unlikely to take it.

I thought of the many people who had said to me, 'You're young; you've got plenty of time to recover.' This seemed the coldest comfort, the grimmest fact of all.

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.

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.

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.

I want to sharpen my pride on what strengthens me, my witness on what haunts me. Whatever we name ourselves, however we end up shattering our self-hatred, shame, silence, and isolation, the goal is the same: to end our daily material oppression.

I was sickened by what I witnessed when I went through the corporate government disability system.

I was surprised at the great lengths that the government goes to in order to deny eligible disability claims.

I went to the doctors to get better, instead they made me sicker.

Losing some faculties is worse than losing your life.