Michael Carter-Williams Quotes

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.

I have a great relationship with Special Olympics back in Baltimore and have had one for many years.

Special Olympics is an organization I have done a lot of work with, first while growing up in Massachusetts and then as an NBA player in Philadelphia.

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

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.

The ADA gave more than 50 million Americans with disabilities, just like my son Cole, the chance to live the American Dream and be defined only by their potential - not their limitations.

I've been dealing with the Special Olympics since I was young. On Sundays I used to go help monitor little soccer practices.

I started working with Special Olympics when I was 17 years old. I'll never forget the first time I did it: I was at Weber State, and it was the summer before I started school. We have to get up in the morning and do this Special Olympics camp.

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.

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

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?'

Yooralla, like most disability service organisations, is full of good people who are passionate about the rights of people with disabilities.

I am convening the African Leaders Forum on Disability in partnership with Special Olympics so that a marginalized population long unrecognized does not remain in the shadows. I consider this a critical, moral and practical challenge.

I have a son, Mason, who is disabled - cerebral palsy - and he does not walk independently, sit independently or speak. He uses a talking computer. I started becoming an advocate for him when he was 3 years old.

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.

I'm also involved in the rights of the disabled and do some fundraising for that and I thought it would have been a big boost for the campaign but it couldn't be worked out.

My grandmother, Nina Eaton, founded United Cerebral Palsy. At the time that my father was born with it, there were no resources for people with the condition. So my grandmother and grandfather, who lived in Brooklyn, tried to reach out for some type of resource or support, and people just told them to institutionalize my father.

The biggest kick I get is to communicate with those who are exiled from the game - in hospitals, homes, prisons - those who have seldom seen a game, who can't travel to a game, those who are blind.

For me, the wheelchair symbolizes disability in a way a cane does not.

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.

Teach [our girls] that there is a race with special needs [Blacks] which they and only they can help; that the world needs and is already asking for their trained, efficient forces.

My responsibility is, I'm always trying to look for new people of color or even artistic people who need a chance.

Special Olympics is such an empowering organization for the thousands of athletes involved and those of us like myself who lend support to them.

We have to show respect for that woman who has cerebral palsy and had no choice in her condition, that needs help, and we should help.

I hope that as a professional snowboarder, Olympian, and now, a Global Ambassador for Special Olympics, I will be able to change perceptions about people with intellectual disabilities.