Shaquem Griffin 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 world worries about disability more than disabled people do.

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.

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

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

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 me, disability is a physical experience, but it's also a cultural experience and a social experience, and for me, the word 'crip' is the one that best encapsulated all of that.

Being deaf or having any disability is not tragic. But the stereotypes about it are tragic.

A handicap is only if you let it be a handicap.

I'm not an advocate for disability issues. Human issues are what interest me.

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.

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

I identify very proudly as a disabled woman. I identify with the crip community. I didn't invent the word 'crip'. It's a political ideology I came to in my late teens and early 20s.

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.

Disability informs almost every part of my life. It's as important, if not more so, than my gender and sexuality. It's certainly a great deal more important to me than my religion or whether or not I caught a tram, ferry or bus to work.

But my message to people with or without a condition is the fact that you can still do anything you set your mind to. You just have to do it in a slightly different way than other people.

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

People categorise people as being disabled, and it's basically whatever you put your mind to, you can do, and everybody that has limitations, they can still do anything they want as long as they set their mind to it.

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

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.

The arrogance of the able-bodied is staggering. Yes, maybe we'd like to be able to get places quickly, and carry things in both hands but only because we have to keep up with the rest of you ... We would rather be just like us, and have that be all right.

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

It's not our disabilities, it's our abilities that count.

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.