Stella Young Quotes

Why do we let blind people and people in wheelchairs become citizens? I feel sorry for cripples, but that doesn't mean I want them in my country.

I hate the words 'handicapped' and 'disabled'. They imply that you are less than whole. I don't see myself that way at all.

A lot of times, we look at people who have disabilities as, 'Oh, we can't invite these people here or there.' And I hate that, because it's inappropriate. It's so weird to me when people say they don't have friends who have disabilities.

People didn't always see a person with a disability who had to use a ramp or elevator as people who have been given unnecessary privileges. But I run into that often now. People are saying, 'Why do we have to go to great expense for these people?'

The world worries about disability more than disabled people do.

We are a society that treats people with disabilities with condescension and pity, not dignity and respect.

Pity? You don't want to be pitied because you're a cripple in a wheelchair? Stay in your house!

I've had tons of bullies who would call me retarded, even on my Facebook page. It's sad and it really hurts. I want to tell people not to use the word. Don't say your friend's retarded when they do something foolish. If you have a disability, keep working hard. Whatever it takes, do it, and don't be mean to people.

For lots of us, disabled people are not our teachers or our doctors or our manicurists. We're not real people. We are there to inspire.

If I can be an inspiration for someone, that's fine, but just don't look down on me. Don't say, 'Oh, you're in a wheelchair.'

People who are much too sensitive to demand of cripples that they run races ask of the poor that they get up and act just like everyone else in society.

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?'

Britain's way of dealing with disability is just to try and pretend it's not happening. A swift sweep under the carpet.

People tend to treat people with disabilities sort of like they're aliens from another planet. It doesn't come from a bad place; it comes from a place of, 'I have no idea what this disability entails, and I don't want to offend anyone or make them feel awful.'

My best friend is disabled. There's nothing he hates more than being left out of the jokes, to be treated with kid gloves. That's the insult.

Instead of being presented with stereotypes by age, sex, color, class, or religion, children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful.

I don't generally talk about medical terms when I discuss my position as a disabled person. I take a social rather than medical approach to disability, and so long Latin names for congenital conditions are not relevant.

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.

We can continue to learn generation after generation and now is time to begin to learn how to love in a non-discriminatory way because we are intelligent enough, but we are not loving enough as a species.

There's nothing I love more in life than turning around a bigot.

A week before shooting, they told me, You don't have the part, yet. We're still trying to find a handicapped kid who can act. Either that or we break your legs.

Although there exist many thousand subjects for elegant conversation, there are persons who cannot meet a cripple without talking about feet.

I really love filling out forms - quite fortuitous, really, given that as one of Australia's 4 million-ish disabled people, ticking boxes and recording my life for other people is what I've spent a fair chunk of my time doing.

I don't even know why, but I've just always done it - I don't walk on handicapped parking spaces. I don't like to step on the blue lines. I always step over them. I don't know what the deal is. I don't know if it's a fear of injury, or a disrespectful thing, or if I just don't want to think about something like that happening.

We think we know what it's all about; we think that disability is a really simple thing, and we don't expect to see disabled people in our daily lives.