Quotes & Sayings About Disabled

What we're doing, or, I should say, what you're doing, since no one has taught me any good words, is dropping recipes into people's brains to cause a neurochemical reaction to knock out the filters. Tie them up just long enough to slip an instruction past. And you do that by speaking a string of words crafted for the person's psychographic segment. Probably words that were crafted decades ago and have been strengthened ever since. And it's a string of words because the brain has layers of defenses, and for the instruction to get through, they all have to be disabled at once.'
Jeremy said, 'How do you know this?'
'Do you think I'm smart?'
'I think you're scary,' he said. — Max Barry

It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking lady she was; dark, like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face and voice; and with very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her large nose, as if, being disabled by the wrongs of her sex from wearing whiskers, she had carried them to that account. She brought with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was. — Charles Dickens

Just to see what a pink dress can mean to a woman, any woman, but a disabled woman, that's extra special and thrilling because they shouldn't be separated and their disabilities don't have to separate them in anyway. — Betsey Johnson

Some parents manufacture an affirmative construction of their child's disability to disguise their despair, while others have a deep and genuine experience of joy in caring for disabled children, and that sometimes the first stance can generate the second. — Andrew Solomon

These people also tended to pretend to care deeply about the blind and otherwise disabled. I am sympathetic to the needs of those users, but I can't help but think that those who claimed to speak for the blind were being more than a little disingenuous, just like those Hemp people who present their arguments in terms of their deep and abiding care for the textile industry, when their real motives are ... something else entirely. — Jamie Zawinski

My message is not just to disabled people, but to everyone: You have to work hard. — Natalie Du Toit

Since when do the media care about the disabled? I don't remember a lot of gnashing of teeth when Fox's Family Guy made fun of Sarah Palin's Down syndrome child, Trig. They — Ann Coulter

One of the things that frequently gets lost in descriptions of depression is that the depressed person often knows that it is a ludicrous condition to feel so disabled by the ordinary business of quotidian life. — Andrew Solomon

Religion - religion, at best - at BEST - is like a lift in your shoe. If you need it for a while, and it makes you walk straight and feel better - fine. But you don't need it forever, or you can become permanently disabled. Religion is like a lift in the shoe, and I say just don't ask me to wear your shoes. And let's not go down and nail lifts onto the natives' feet. — George Carlin

More than food and shelter, the disabled crave love and compassion. They need to feel wanted. There is an Indian saying, "Not wealth, not food, but a little genuine comforting oomph can breathe life into a dead person." Caring and comforting love can heal the soul. It takes unconditional love to offer such comfort and care. — Bhupendra O. Khatri

Once upon a time, privacy was valued. For goodness' sake, a disabled president of the United States could ask that the press not photograph him in a wheelchair or being transferred to his car or generally in a weakened state, and the press would oblige. Those were the days. — Julianna Baggott

A country is mostly the people in it," Maud said. "I don't love England. My parents died a long time ago, and my brother has disowned me. I love Germany. For me, Germany is my wonderful husband, Walter; my misguided son, Erik; my alarmingly capable daughter, Carla; our maid, Ada, and her disabled son; my friend Monika and her family; my journalistic colleagues . . . I'm staying, to fight the Nazis. — Ken Follett

There is nothing more disconcerting to passers-by than to see a man in a wheelchair pleading with a woman who is meant to be looking after him. It's apparently not really the done thing to be angry with your disabled charge. Especially — Jojo Moyes

We are called to reach out to those who find themselves in the existential peripheries of our societies and to show particular solidarity with the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters: the poor, the disabled, the unborn and the sick, migrants and refugees, the elderly and the young who lack employment. — Pope Francis

The disabled people that do sport, they don't think about what they don't have but try to get better with what they do have. That is the same for me. — Johan Cruyff

If we want technology to serve society rather than enslave it, we have to build systems accessible to all people - be they male or female, young, old, disabled, computer wizards or technophobes. — Anita Borg

Or maybe in school you didn't learn as quickly as you thought other kids did, and rather than considering the idea that you had a different learning strategy, you may have decided that you were "learning-disabled. — Anthony Robbins

Want to do something noble and courageous while you're on this Earth treat the mentally ill like they have some worth. — Stanley Victor Paskavich

Darwinism undermined traditional morality and the value of human life. Then, evolutionary progress became the new moral imperative. This aided the advance of eugenics, which was overtly founded on Darwinian principles. Some eugenicists began advocating euthanasia and infanticide for the disabled. On a parallel track, some prominent Darwinists argued that human racial competition and war is part of the Darwinian struggle for existence. Hitler imbibed these social Darwinist ideas, blended in virulent anti-Semitism, and
there you have it: Holocaust — Richard Weikart

Similarly, Alexis de Tocqueville, the famous French political philosopher and sociologist, in his classic Democracy in America, written after a lengthy visit in the 1830s, saw equality, not majority rule, as the outstanding characteristic of America. "In America," he wrote, the aristocratic element has always been feeble from its birth; and if at the present day it is not actually destroyed, it is at any rate so completely disabled, that we can scarcely assign to it any degree of influence on the course of affairs. The — Milton Friedman

The sign says BLIND PEOPLE'S ARBORETUM. I stand, still out of breath, dripping sweat and marveling at such a beautiful concept - in China, of all places, where disabled people are still often considered flawed and superfluous. I have never seen anything like this, even in the United States or Europe, and yet here, hidden away on the edge of a noisy, bustling, modernizing Chinese city, someone has taken the effort and expense to plant this beautiful, tree-hugging garden - an island of stop-and-rest in a sea of smash-and-grab. 5. — Rob Gifford

The greatest feeling of accomplishment for me is the fact that I was an athlete who was somewhat disabled. — Bill Toomey

I'm a jacket man. And if I'm without one, I am kind of seriously disabled. I don't know how to operate in shirt sleeves. — Bill Nighy

Human life, the person is no longer perceived as a primary value to be respected and protected, especially if poor or disabled, if not yet useful - such as the unborn child - or no longer needed - such as the elderly. — Pope Francis

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!!! — Yvonne Pierre

For guardians of the status quo, there is nothing genuinely or fundamentally wrong with the prevailing order and its dominant institutions, which are viewed as just. Therefore, anyone claiming otherwise - especially someone sufficiently motivated by that belief to take radical action - must, by definition, be emotionally unstable and psychologically disabled. Put — Glenn Greenwald

We polled Tesla owners, do you want autopilot disabled or not. Not one person wanted it disabled. That's pretty telling. — Elon Musk

I am a whole person. I'm not a neurotypical person with an 'autism' part. I'm not a disabled neurotypical. I am a whole autisic person!. — Tina J. Richardson

With his fingers, he followed the shape of her chin, her jaw, and learned her features, committing them to memory. Her face was small, her bones fragile. Exquisite. — Sofia Grey

A person who breaks a promise diminishes herself. It's like losing a finger. It's worse than being paralyzed, which is merely physical. Someone whose promises are worthless has a disabled soul. — Ken Follett

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. — Anne-Marie Slaughter

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. — Lewis B. Smedes

It surprised me because she put it as well (or better) than I could have and made a simple point she didn't even intend: being disabled wasn't the main thing about her. — Cammie McGovern

It's an objective fact that I am a double amputee, but it's very subjective opinion as to whether that makes me disabled. — Aimee Mullins

We've become so fearful and vengeful that we've thrown away children, discarded the disabled, and sanctioned the imprisonment of the sick and the weak - not because they are a threat to public safety or beyond rehabilitation but because we think it makes us seem tough, less broken. — Bryan Stevenson

I don't see myself as disabled. There's nothing I can't do that able-bodied athletes can do. — Oscar Pistorius

You're just doing this to make yourself feel better." "I will fucking punch you, you disabled asshole." Prophet threw his hands in the air. "I swear to Christ, that's abuse. You can't yell at a disabled person like that. You can't call a disabled person disabled asshole. That's just fucking wrong." "Who says?" "I do," Prophet said indignantly. Doc was biting back a smile. "And it's not funny." Doc's voice was quiet, a little rough and choked when he said, "I know, Proph." And that was enough for Prophet to admit, "I don't think I can do this." Although he had no real idea what this was. At this point, it translated into everything. Doc — S.E. Jakes

I dance as a political statement, because disabled bodies are inherently political, but I mostly dance for all the same reasons anyone else does: because it heals my spirit and fills me with joy. — Stella Young

The struggle doesn't last long; it's too unequal. Their momentary surprise overcome, they close in on him. The well-directed slice of a gun-butt slackens the good arm; it's easy to pry the disabled one from around the racketeer's collar.
Tereshko is trembling with his anger. 'Now him again!' he protests, as though at an injustice. 'All they do is die and then get up and walk around again! What'sa matter, you guys using spitballs for slugs? No, don't kick at him, that'll never do it - I think the guy has nine lives!' ("Jane Brown's Body") — Cornell Woolrich

When Medicare was created for senior citizens and America 's disabled in 1965, about half of a senior's health care spending was on doctors and the other half on hospitals. — Dennis Hastert

The use of psychoactive drugs - including both antidepressants and antipsychotics - has exploded ... [yet] 'the tally of those who are disabled ... increased nearly two and a half times. — Marcia Angell

Quietly, Macey went through her options. Even though the masked men were asking for cell phones, the gunmen were making so much noise that she was sure someone had already called 911. The obvious exits were blocked, and the elevators had no doubt been disabled. The men moved with confidence and order, but they weren't trying to be quiet. There was nothing covert at all about this operation.
Unlike the boy beside her. — Ally Carter

The Oxys filled holes in me I hadn't realized were empty. It was, at least for those first few months, a wonderful way to be disabled. I felt blessed. — Donald Ray Pollock

On the other side of the spectrum, you see someone like Donald Trump, who is using as the basis of his campaign political incorrectness. It's clearly intentional. He'd have to be a complete moron just to coincidentally insult Mexicans, and women, and disabled people, and Muslims. So clearly he's using it as a vote winner. But I think with comedians there's a responsibility. — Sacha Baron Cohen

We have the can-do factor, and us doing what we do I think inspires people to just try that little bit harder, whether they are able-bodied or disabled. — Lee Pearson

We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed. — C.S. Lewis

That's what we should do, Hazel Grace: We should team up and be this disabled vigilante duo roaring through the world, righting wrongs, defending the weak, protecting the endangered. — John Green

I don't need to write light, to see light.
You are only disabled, if you disable yourself.
I may have an illness, but I am not the illness
Truth is, despite what they may say, I'll get out of this world alive.

I am the Gospel of Myself. — Alexej Savreux

As disabled people, we are taught from a young age that those who are attracted to us are to be regarded with suspicion. — Stella Young

I'd laugh, only my stupid lizard brain has disabled the laugh button for now. I'm too frozen up with tension.
I am owed so much laughter. Sometimes I hope I'm building up a stockpile of missing laughs, and when I've recovered, they'll all come exploding out in one gigantic fit that last twenty-four hours. — Sophie Kinsella

There have been so many examples of highly qualified judges of enormous integrity who lost their positions because they were in fact disabled from speaking out to defend a controversial opinion. — Deborah Rhode

Humans are not disabled. A person can never be broken. Our built environment, our technologies, are broken and disabled. We the people need not accept our limitations, but can transcend disability through technological innovation. — Hugh Herr

Is there anything as incredible as the love story of your own parents? Anything as hard to grasp as the fact that those two over-the-hill players, permanently on the disabled list, were once in the starting lineup? It's impossible to imagine my father, who in my experience was aroused mainly by the lowering of interest rates, suffering the acute, adolescent passions of the flesh. — Jeffrey Eugenides

I honestly didn't think miracles could ever come from my broken pieces, and I was disabled in fear that my dreams would always remain as dreams. Don't give up on you. Don't give up on God. Don't give up on love. — Nick Vujicic

The idea that someone could, or would want to, experience uninterrupted happiness over a period of days, let alone years, is ludicrous.

Anyone who feels pleasant and bubbly all the time is either mentally disabled or hooked on crack.

Money, on the other hand, is steady. You can spend it, invest it or light a little bit on fire in an intern's ass. Either way, money gets to sleep over.

Money is a resource that makes it easier for you to find your purpose and achieve your goals, not because you are buying happiness, but because you are eliminating the desperation that drains happiness and distracts you from your purpose. — Ari Gold

It is unacceptable that disabled veterans in Illinois rank at the bottom of the list when it comes to disability pay. We owe our disabled veterans more than speeches, parades and monuments. — Dick Durbin

Being disabled doesn't mean you have a disadvantage — Oscar Pistorius

That's why you never hear politicians talking about 'citizens,' it's all 'taxpayers,' as though the salient fact of your relationship to the state is how much you pay. Like the state was a business and citizenship was a loyalty program that rewarded you for your custom with roads and health care. Zottas cooked the process so they get all the money and own the political process, pay as much or as little tax as they want. Sure, they pay most of the tax, because they've built a set of rules that gives them most of the money. Talking about 'taxpayers' means that the state's debt is to rich dudes, and anything it gives to kids or old people or sick people or disabled people is charity we should be grateful for, since none of those people are paying tax that justifies their rewards from Government Inc. — Cory Doctorow

I don't think of myself as being disabled, or able-bodied. — Natalie Du Toit

I rest my head on his shoulder and close my eyes, which keeps the business part of my brain temporarily disabled. — Cynthia Hand

In 1990, when we started the Black Community Crusade for Children, we were always talking about all children, but we paid particular attention to children who were not white, who were poor, who were disabled, and who were the most vulnerable.Parents didn't think their children would live to adulthood, and the children didn't think they were going to live to adulthood. That's when we started our first gun-violence campaign. We've lost 17 times more young black people to gun violence since 1968 than we lost in all the lynching in slavery. — Marian Wright Edelman

It is essential that we provide the best possible care for our wounded and disabled veterans. — Tom Udall

I am in the process of starting a nonprofit organization that gives rescued animals a home in a simulated wild environment and, for those who have been tested on, who are disabled, aggressive, etc., their own space to live out their days. — Casey Affleck

She did not make monsters of us. She simply gave us the power to remake ourselves into those inviolable creatures the God of Equality had intended us to be. We knew she was deconstructing the old disabled versions of our sex, and that her ruthlessness was adopted because those constructs were built to endure. She broke down the walls that had kept us contained. There was a fresh red field on the other side, and in its rich soil were growing all the flowers of war that history never let us gather. It was beautiful to walk in. As beautiful as the fells that autumn. — Sarah Hall

I will never tell another person, "I don't understand you ... " and why? Because if I say that, it means that I am disabled in a way. The inability to connect to another's perspective is, I believe, a disability. — C. JoyBell C.

The dissemination of advanced implantable technology will likely be just as ruthlessly democratic as the ailments it is destined to treat. Meaning that, someday soon, we may have a new class of very smart, very fast people - yesterday's disabled and elderly. — Daniel H. Wilson

I have discovered few learning disabled students in my three decades of teaching. I have, however, discovered many, many victims of teaching inabilities. — Marva Collins

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. — Jesse Ventura

When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed. The loss of happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of happier life for the second. Therefore, if killing the hemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others, it would, according to the total view, be right to kill him. — Peter Singer

Parks is on his knees now, a few feet to Justineau's left. He's working the crank to open the door. But it's not opening, even though he's encouraging it with a continuous stream of bad language. Caldwell must have disabled the emergency access. Melanie — M.R. Carey

If it wasn't a chaotic scene, if it was an orderly evacuation, we would be able to give you specifics about what our preferences would be, such as evacuating first the disabled, then the elderly and infants. That would of course be our preference. But the reality on the scene does not permit that. We're going to do the best we can with the resources we have. — David Catania

In the midst of the ubiquitous dealings with prostituted signs, the thing-poem was capable of opening up the prospect of returning to credible experiences of meaning. It did this by tying language to the gold standard of what things themselves communicate. Where randomness is disabled, authority should shine forth. — Peter Sloterdijk

If one is physically disabled, one cannot afford to be *psychologically* disabled as well. — Stephen Hawking

I use the term 'disabled people' quite deliberately, because I subscribe to what's called the social model of disability, which tells us that we are more disabled by the society that we live in than by our bodies and our diagnoses. — Stella Young

Alex kneels down to Shelley's level. The simple act of respect tears at something suspiciously like my heart. Colin always ignores my sister, treating her as if she's blind and deaf as well as physically and mentally disabled. — Simone Elkeles

We are all disabled, broken parts, lost individuals, trying to find our way. Truth is what you know, here and happening now. There is only love and love is the bravest character of all. — Jacqueline Cioffa

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

Building up a weakness just makes you less disabled. Building a strength can take you to the top of the world. — John Elder Robison

Writing checks to the IRS that include strings of zeros does not bother me ... Overall, we feel extraordinarily lucky to have been dealt a hand in life that enables us to write large checks to the government rather than one requiring the government to regularly write checks to us-say, because we are disabled or unemployed. — Warren Buffett

The students at Gallaudet University deserve our congratulations. They educated the nation about deafness, and won a long overdue victory for all disabled people. — Michael Dukakis

FDR, even weakened and near the end of his life, opted to allow disabled veterans to see his true condition. This allowed them to understand the life which could still be before them. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

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. — Elyn Saks

Rules meant order. Without them they'd be killing each other. It began with butting in, with parking in disabled spaces, with smoking in elevators. And it ended in murder. — Louise Penny

Once we ask why it should be that all human beings - including infants, the intellectually disabled, criminal psychopaths, Hitler, Stalin, and the rest - have some kind of dignity or worth that no elephant, pig, or chimpanzee can ever achieve, we see that this question is as difficult to answer as our original request for some relevant fact that justifies the inequality of humans and other animals. — Peter Singer

Government regulations required that an elevator be installed for the use of the disabled. Mother would not allow an elevator. The city offered to pay for the elevator. Its offer was refused. After all the negotiations and plans, the project for the poor was abandoned because an elevator for the handicapped was unacceptable. — Christopher Hitchens

What I learned was that these athletes were not disabled, they were superabled. The Olympics is where heroes are made. The Paralympics is where heroes come. — Joey Reiman

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. — Jim Brown

So virtuous are the programs said to be - pensions for the elderly, compensation for the unemployed, medicine for the sick, and assistance for the disabled - few dare ring the alarm of looming economic catastrophe that threatens to destabilize the civil society. — Mark Levin

For those looking at me, meeting me for the first time, it is the body they see. I am labelled as disabled. — Giles Duley

We are the trade union for pensioners and children, the trade union for the disabled and the sick ... the trade union for the nation as a whole. — Edward Heath

Being disabled should not mean being disqualified from having access to every aspect of life. — Emma Thompson

I've read all the books, I've watched all the films and now, thanks to the glory of home gaming, I've even kind of experienced it: I've landed on the beaches of Normandy, I have successfully held Pegasus Bridge and I've disabled German tanks with stolen Panzerfausts. I have fought in Italy, France and North Africa and if I had a Euro for every virtual life I've lost I'd be able to build a replica of Hitler's bunker in my back garden. — Tom Dunne

This isn't a matter for the eyes, it is a matter for the heart. Many signs point to a growing historical consciousness among the American people. I trust this is so. It is useful to remember that history is to the nation as memory is to the individual. As persons deprived of memory, they become disoriented and lost, not knowing where they have been and where they are going. So a nation denied a conception of the past will be disabled in dealing with its present and its future. When I'm depressed, I ascribe our behavior to stupidity, the stupidity of our leadership, the stupidity of our culture. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

There are hundreds of ways we accommodate physical disabilities - or at least understand them. We get angry when people fail to recognize the need for thoughtful and compassionate assistance when it comes to the physically disabled, but because mental disabilities aren't visible in the same way, we tend to be dismissive of the needs of the disabled and quick to judge their deficits and failures. — Bryan Stevenson

When the perfect order prevails, the world is like a home shared by all. Leaders are capable and virtuous. Everyone loves and respects their own parents and children as well as the parents and children of others. The old are cared for, adults have jobs, children are nourished and educated. There is a means of support for all those who are disabled or find themselves alone in the world. Everyone has an appropriate role to play in the family and society. Devotion to public duty leaves no place for idleness. Scheming for ill gain is unknown. Sharing displaces selfishness and materialism. — Confucius

Accepting experiences is through the understanding that everybody was born equal, no labels, no social status, no preconceptions just born a little person preparing to grow-up on what ever path is grown from development, environment and/or otherwise everybody has the right to have a roof over their head, three meals a day, a wage/payment which can support themselves and their families, a benefit system that cares for the disabled and people with mental illnesses, a government that looks out for all it's people, wars quenched not and man made barriers be fallen so every person knows the commonality of being human is that everybody is all different and let people be novices to other peoples experiences so another person gains anew. People all deserve the right to be equal. — Paul Isaacs

If computers are readily accessible, and they have a floppy disk or CD drive, you might also consider fitting locks to floppy and CD drives, or (in extreme cases) removing the floppy and CD drives from the computers altogether. If the server or control room Stations have unused USB ports, they should be disabled to prevent memory sticks or other uncontrolled devices from being connected to the system. Such devices may be used to introduce virus or other malware. You should also consider disabling or physically protecting the power button to prevent unauthorized use. — Anonymous

We've been sold this lie that disability makes you exceptional and it honestly doesn't. ... I want to live in a world where we don't have such low expectations of disabled people that we are congratulated for getting out of bed and remembering our own names in the morning. — Stella Young

And for a very special group of people, we've provided their only job. I'm speaking of course of the disabled. They have stated they don't want a hand out just a hand. We are happy to give them one. — Carl Karcher

Why? Because free prenatal testing ends up in more abortions and, therefore, less care that has to be done, because we cull the ranks of the disabled in our society. — Rick Santorum