Quotes & Sayings About Wheelchairs

How to pry the tourists out of their automobiles, out of their back-breaking upholstered mechanized wheelchairs and onto their feet, onto the strange warmth and solidity of Mother Earth again? This is the problem which the Park Service should confront directly, not evasively, and which it cannot resolve by simply submitting and conforming to the automobile habit. — Edward Abbey

I can tell you the day The Beach Boys will no longer exist - never. We'll be on stage in wheelchairs. — Dennis Wilson

Another thing about Oscar is that he wasn't afraid of anyone. And he always made up his own mind, no matter what other people said. They're two of the best things I remember about him now.
He wasn't just my friend. He was kind of magic. I can't really explain it better than that. He was honest and he was decent and he was always cheerful. And evem though his brother Stevie had to use a wheelchair, it wasn't a problem the way people usually think it is, because Oscar always made sure that every door was opened and every stairway had a ramp, and every train station had the right access so he could get it. He used to say that if the world was designed properly, the whole population would be flying around the place in wheelchairs. And when he said that, Stevie used to laugh. — Sarah Moore Fitzgerald

Just because I am wheelchair-bound doesn't mean I don't get around. — Maya Angelou

I know easyJet is not luxury, but we certainly don't charge for wheelchairs or take away essentials. You have to make the passengers reasonably comfy for the sake of health. — Stelios Haji-Ioannou

We should do another 10 Bad Boys movies. I could come in in one of those electric wheelchairs, like Peter Sellers in Dr Strangelove, just shouting away. — Joe Pantoliano

Old ladies in wheelchairs with blankets over their legs, I don't think so ... retired mermaids. — Milton Jones

I mean, I understand that because they're disadvantaged that they deserve their own parking spots, but do they have to make them so wide? I never understood how these people were allowed to drive cars but they get these really neat chairs with wheels and they're still not happy, so instead of parking their wheelchairs in the designated spots, they upstage us normal people and get the best parking spots with vehicles that are clearly too sophisticated for them to be handling. Still, you should smile at a cripple, because it's the only bit of happiness they'll ever have. — Zach Braff

When we cut off access to certain parts of our cities to people on bikes or in wheelchairs, we're not only doing economic damage, we're also doing culture damage. New York is the culture capital of the world because people are running into each other on the street all the time. They are forced to engage in creativity and problem-solving. — Ben Sollee

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 that
the dorms and classrooms can't
accommodate 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

When asked about her involvements, Joni most often refers to her work at JAF Ministries, including Wheels for the World - a program through which used wheelchairs are collected, refurbished, and hand-delivered, along with Bibles, to needy disabled people in developing nations. Chuck Colson has stated, "My friend Joni Eareckson Tada is one of God's choice servants of today." Philip Yancey has added, "Through her public example, Joni has done more to straighten out warped views of suffering than all the theologians put together. Her life is a triumph of healing - a healing of the spirit, the most difficult kind." You can read more about this remarkable woman in the twentieth-anniversary edition of her autobiography, titled Joni, published by Zondervan. — Joni Eareckson Tada

In Paris they have special wheelchairs that go through every doorway. They don't change the doorways, they change the wheelchairs. To hell with the people! If someone weighs a couple more pounds, that's it! — Itzhak Perlman

I'd rather be in this wheelchair knowing God than on my feet without him. — Joni Eareckson Tada

If I had to last 20 years, I would probably be batting in a wheelchair. — Ricky Ponting

Being confined to a wheelchair doesn't bother me as my mind is free to roam the universe, but it felt wonderful to be weightless. — Stephen Hawking

Confiscation in any form is an unhealthy solution for a real disease. It amounts to telling men that because they are economically crippled, they must abandon all efforts to get well and allow the state to provide them with free wheelchairs. — Fulton J. Sheen

Not everything in old age is grim. I haven't walked through an airport for years, and wheelchairs are the way to travel. — Donald Hall

When humans were young, they were pushed around in strollers. When they were old, they were pushed around in wheelchairs. In between, they were just pushed around. — Tom Robbins

We all understand what we signed up for, but then again, you don't want this to be a game that puts people in wheelchairs at age 40. — Drew Brees

I learned that people in wheelchairs are allowed to have marathons ... which, to me, seems like cheating, but what are you gonna say? — Sarah Silverman

We fill our lives with all sorts of things that make it easier for us to get along in the world: wheelchairs, crutches, grabber sticks, hearing aids, canes, guide dogs, modified vehicles, ramps, as well as other kinds of services and supports. Disability does not necessarily mean dependence on other people. — Stella Young

LOU SANDERS WAS on his way to joining the infantilized and catatonic denizens belted into the wheelchairs of a North Andover nursing home — Atul Gawande

They sat in a row on the couches and in wheelchairs listening to the radio, their faded eyes fixed on the fish or on nothing or something they saw a long time ago.
Francis would always remember the shuffle of feet on linoleum in the hot and buzzing day, and the smell of stewed tomatoes and cabbage from the kitchen, the smell of old people like meat wrappers dried in the sun, and always the radio. — Thomas Harris

Retire? I can't spell the word. I'd play in a wheelchair. — Keith Richards

She visited a nursing home nearby. 'It was actually one of the nicer ones,' she said. 'It was clean.' But it was a nursing home. 'You had the people in their wheelchairs all slumped over and lined up in the corridors. It was horrible.' It was the sort of place, she said, that her father feared more than anything. 'He did not want his life reduced to a bed, a dresser, a tiny TV, and half of a room with the curtain between him and someone else.'
But, she said, as she walked out of the place she thought, 'This is what I have to do.' Awful as it seemed, it was where she had to put him.
Why, I asked? — Atul Gawande

A good-for-America immigration policy would not accept people with no job skills. It would not accept immigrants' elderly relatives, arriving in wheelchairs. It would not accept people accused of terrorism by their own countries. It would not accept pregnant women whose premature babies will cost taxpayers $50,000 a pop,1 before even embarking on a lifetime of government support. It would not accept Somalis who spent their adult lives in a Kenyan refugee camp and then showed up with five children in a Minnesota homeless shelter. — Ann Coulter

God is at the tip of our scalpels, our screwdrivers, our computer terminals, our dust rags, our vacuum cleaners, our pencils and pens. He is with us in our wheelchairs, or on our hospital beds, when all we can do is sit or lie flat. When we envision Him and His purpose in what we do, then we begin to grow aware of His presence in the middle of it. We are able to engage in our inward conversation with Him as we work, naturally, without strain. He becomes our partner, our collaborator. — Sue Monk Kidd

Just because we are in wheelchairs doesn't mean we can't play a fast-paced, full-contact sport. — Mark Zupan

My mother was determined that I should be able to walk two miles. If you could walk two miles, she said, you could get to most places you needed to get to. Actually, this is a fallacy. The fact that you can, with great difficulty, and taking an unconscionably time about it, walk two miles, will not get you anywhere you need, or at any rate want, to go. There were times when a wheelchair would have added another dimension to my life, but that was a forbidden subject; and it was not until many, many years later, long after my father and I were alone, that I took the law into my own hands and bought one; and instantly, dazzled with the new freedom that it brought me, swept my father off to his old haunts on an Hellenic cruise. — Rosemary Sutcliff

I have a condition called Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI), which has affected my growth and bone strength. In short, people with the kind of OI I have generally experience hundreds of fractures in their lifetime and use wheelchairs for mobility. — Stella Young

We want to galvanize people's imaginations. With enough political will and investment, we could make wheelchairs obsolete. — Miguel Nicolelis

I used to think I preferred getting old to the alternative, but now I'm not sure. Sometimes the momotony of bingo and sing-alongs and ancient dusty people parked in teh hallway in wheelchairs makes me long for death. Particularly when I rememver that I'm one of the ancient dusty people, filed away like some worthless tchotchke. — Sara Gruen

Fraudulent and improper payments have long bedeviled Medicare, a $466 billion program. In particular, payments for durable medical equipment, like power wheelchairs and diabetic test kits, are ripe for fraud. — Charles Duhigg

There's still so much more to do. I can't sit back and be complacent, and none of us should be. I get around now in a wheelchair, but I get around. — Elizabeth Taylor

This machine, the wheelchair, I can go all over the place, but you need a place without stairs to get in. — Itzhak Perlman

Little old ladies
speed away in their wheelchairs,
frightened meals on wheels. — Ryan Mecum

There is so much pain in the world, and most of these people keep theirs secret, rolling through agonizing lives in invisible wheelchairs, dressed in invisible bodycasts. — Andrew Solomon

I don't think I have a demographic. I was at Comic-Con in San Diego recently, and I was doing a signing, and my line was all military guys, young girls, housewives and guys in wheelchairs. There was just everybody all over the place. — Pamela Adlon

Is it not possible to look beyond the canes, the wheelchairs, the braces, and the crutches into the hearts of the people who have need of these aids? They are human beings and want only to be treated as ordinary people. They may appear different, move awkwardly, and speak haltingly, but they have the same feelings ... They want to be loved for what they are inside, without any prejudice for their impairment. Can there not be more tolerance for differences-differences in capacity, differences in body and in mind? — James E. Faust

I feel bad for people in wheelchairs and people who have to use crutches. — RJ Mitte

How inappropriate,' Lila said coldly. 'Who'd ever dream of showing up at a dance in a wheelchair? What does she think she's going to do all night? — Francine Pascal

Poets are regarded as handicapped writers whose work must be treated with a tender condescension, such as one accords the athletic achievements of basketball players confined to wheelchairs. — Thomas M. Disch

What happened, man? Gerry and Ginsberg are cold, and dead, in the ground. Kesey's stoned, and out of town. We've come to the end of the brotherhood song. The children brandish knives upon each other's throats, and their loaded 45's sit snug in lunch boxes nestled safely between Oreo cookies and a ham sandwich. Where are you now, oh ancient hipsters? Raggedy Beats beat down and broken wheel raggedy wheelchairs down ghostly geriatric wards. Where are you now, oh day-glow dreamers? Have you gotten off the bus and into your Mercedes? Did you get that second mortgage, and bear your fattened little babies? Where is that girl with flowers in her hair? Where is the man with revolution in his veins? We ask ourselves "where did we go wrong?" But there is no we. There is you, and then there is I. You do what you need to survive, And I do what I must to stay alive. We stand here Bleeding, slicing each other's wrists With the icy ridges of hardened jagged hearts, Cassandra's — Bearl Brooks

Most great parts for guys in wheelchairs tend to go to actors who walk. — Mark Ruffalo

It's just been so heartwarming to see my clothes on people in wheelchairs and people needing physical support. — Betsey Johnson

Go to any airport in this country and you'll see how well our government is dealing with the terrible danger you're in. TSA staffers are wanding 90-year-old ladies in wheelchairs, and burrowing through their suitcases. Toddlers are on the no-fly list. Lipsticks are confiscated. And it's all done with the highest seriousness. It's a show of protection and it stirs the fear pot, giving us over and over an image of being in grave personal peril, needing Big Brother to make sure we're safe. — Ann Medlock

I don't care if what we do makes a profit; I care whether we get somebody out of a wheelchair. — Mark Noble

The TV shouted an old black-and-white film he didn't recognize, wheelchairs facing it like church pews. — Sere Prince Halverson

Why is it that fancy hotels always locate the rooms that are supposed to be accessible to folks in wheelchairs and walkers at the end of the hall as far from the elevators as possible? And why is it those rooms are always the ones with the worst views? — Jayne Ann Krentz

There are televisions and radios and the sounds of life, but too there is the sound of death, crying and oxygen tanks, and the squeaky wheels on wheelchairs. Like life and death are in a very close proximity to one another. — Jon Chopan

Being vulgar to be funny is a crutch, and I prefer wheelchairs. — Jarod Kintz

Yes sir, yes madam, I entreat you, get out of those motorized wheelchairs, get off your foam rubber backsides, stand up straight like men! like women! like human beings! and walk-walk-WALK upon our sweet and blessed land! — Edward Abbey

Sometimes the monotony of bingo and sing alongs, ancient dusty people parked in the hallway in wheelchairs makes me long for death, particularly when
remember that I'm one of the ancient dusty people, filed away like some worthless chotski. — Sara Gruen

My father said you can't make a living in birds, my relatives all went into business: bankers, stockbrokers. However, they eventually lost it all and died in wheelchairs. Sometimes you have to be a little aberrant. — Roger Tory Peterson

They walked, some of them for miles, from rural villages deep in the bush. They came in wheelbarrows, in wheelchairs. They came with babies on their back. They came the night before, some of them sleeping on the hard ground outside the polling booths so they could vote when morning came. The — Helene Cooper