Lauren Potter Quotes

Often as a child you see someone with a learning disability or Down's Syndrome and my mum and dad were always very quick to explain exactly what was going on and to be in their own way inclusive and welcoming.

As I grew up, I became aware that there are people with special needs out there, and I have a real connection with them.

I have a strong sense that I have to educate people about disability.

As the mother of a son with disabilities, I try to keep an eye out for news that affects people in the large community of which he is a part.

It was just normal for me growing up with a family member with severe Down Syndrome. It was completely normal. She was just Auntie Linda. I loved her and she loved me. She had a spirit that was just positive. For me it taught me tolerance and acceptance of all human beings.

I'm definitely more understanding of people who have disabilities and who are suffering.

Children born with Down Syndrome are not vegetables, nor are their lives demonstrably not worth living.

By growing up at a center for people with special needs, I learned to always fight hard to achieve what I want. In this regard, I was incredibly lucky.

March is Cerebral Palsy Awareness Month. Don't feel bad if you did not know that. I didn't, either, until someone recently slapped a picture of a green ribbon and a message wishing me a 'Happy CP Awareness Month' on my Facebook page. I always thought March was Women's History Month.

I was always interested in working with people with disabilities, and in high school I worked with people who had Down Syndrome. That was for an agency called AHRC, Association for the Help of Retarded Children. Then I went to college, and throughout college I volunteered for AHRC.

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.

You have discovered so much kindness and good will to those you thought were oppressed, and had no helper, that I am sure you will not despise what I have wrote, if you judge it will be of any service to them.

I think more tolerance, more people having more access to a chance to be literate, and a chance to stay healthy makes for a more peaceful planet.

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?'

My understanding is that Kansas, Massachusetts, they've been more pioneers on the special education side.

I believe it is my responsibility to do what I can for children and people with Down syndrome as well as in my native Dominican Republic.

Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don't believe is right.

We have an obligation to help people that cannot help themselves. The mentally retarded, the physically retarded, et cetera.

Part of what Special Olympics is trying to do is break down stereotypes that still exist for people. There is still a lot of fear.

I want to be part of the storytelling that educates people and awakens a sense of compassion in other people of the kind of people they don't encounter in their daily lives very frequently.

I was recently appointed by President Obama to the President's Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities. I am so excited that the President trusts me to advise him on things that are important to people with disabilities!

I am on the International Board of Best Buddies, and I am also working with Special Olympics, and with The Arc to help people with disabilities become more independent and more included in their communities.

Through books and photographs, I saw a world that was not my own - and I realized that there was another world. That's why I'm concerned about education, because it helps our children see other worlds.

Through the 'It's About Ability' campaign and with parents and other members of society, we have created a social family for children with disabilities.

To the families of special needs children all across this country I have a message for you: for years you have sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters, and I pledge to you that if we're elected, you will have a friend, an advocate, in The White House.