Lee Pearson Quotes

The magnitude of discrimination and stigma faced by people with disability in Australia cannot be underestimated. People do not understand disability, and people fear what they don't understand.

Congress acknowledged that society's accumulated myths and fears about disability and disease are as handicapping as are the physical limitations that flow from actual impairment.

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.

For those looking at me, meeting me for the first time, it is the body they see. I am labelled as disabled.

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.

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.

I know what it's like to be growing up, called 'deaf and mute' and 'deaf and dumb.' They're words that are very degrading and demeaning to people who are deaf and hard of hearing. It's almost... it's almost libelous, if you want to say that.

Disability simulation fails to capture the nuance and complexity of living in a disabled body. And it certainly fails to give a deep understanding of systemic discrimination and abuse faced by disabled people.

Disability is often framed, in medical terms, as the ultimate disaster and certainly as a deficit.

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

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.

As disabled people, we are taught from a young age that those who are attracted to us are to be regarded with suspicion.

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?'

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

It appears to suggest that I was removed because I was disabled - based on one occasion out of hundreds.

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.