Stella Young Quotes

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.

The founding of Graeae by disabled actors was a huge political statement that you forgot at your peril.

Disability doesn't make you exceptional, but questioning what you think you know about it does.

You're not disabled unless you say 'I'm disabled.'

Paralympic sport and other disability sport can and should be celebrated in its own right.

It's undeniable that what we are taught as a culture to believe about disability is at odds with traditional notions of masculinity.

It became very clear to me that Yooralla was not as interested in media coverage that explored issues faced by people with disability as it was in giving a pat on the back to journalists who maintained the status quo by giving readers the warm and fuzzies over their morning paper.

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.

Physical access is one of the very first issues disability rights activists of the 1960s and '70s fought for.

Disability is as visual as race. If a wheelchair user can't play Beyonce, then Beyonce can't play a wheelchair user.

Respectfully, the civil rights movement for people with disabilities is modeled on the African American civil rights movement. I'm old enough to remember 1964. I was a junior in high school.

I think one in five Americans has a disability of some sort. That's 20% of the population, and yet we rarely ever see people with disabilities on-screen, and their stories and their resilience and their zest for life and their humor and their humanity.

People with disabilities are simply part of diverse communities in the U.S.

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.

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.

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

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.

The whole community of people with disabilities was alive, politically alive. I give Justin Dart credit for that. He traveled to every state in the country. He really made people with disabilities understand that they had some political power.

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?'

People get all up in arms when I describe myself as a crip because what they hear is the word 'cripple,' and they hear a word you're not allowed to say anymore.

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

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

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.

People with disabilities have abilities too and that is what this course is all about - making sure those abilities blossom and shine so that all the dreams you have can come true.