Adaptive Living Quotes

The details of the world in which we live are always secondary to the fact that we must live in them.

Having been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1998, and I am continually amazed by the level of support I receive from individuals across the country.

When disease took my legs, I eventually realized I didn't need them to lead a full, empowering life; Only True Disability Is in Our Mind.

I know that with my spinal condition I can never be full time again - I just can't do that, but I do wanna be full time, and I don't want to retire.

It is a miracle that I can see at all and continue serving the American people.

The only thing I can't do is hear. I can drive, I have a life with four kids, I work on TV, I do movies, so the deafness question, is it that they want to know because, what? Not sure.

I completely admire my mother for raising a child with cerebral palsy at home.

I don't know what it's like to be an arm amputee, or have even one flesh-and-bone leg, or to have cerebral palsy. I don't speak for such huge and diverse groups. What I've tried to do, what I've been fortunate to do, is to live my live and create my life as I've wanted to create it.

I'm officially disabled, but I'm truly enabled because of my lack of limbs. My unique challenges have opened up unique opportunities to reach so many in need.

My legs haven't disabled me. If anything, they've enabled me.

I have friends who have children with various disabilities, and I was able to talk to them about just sort of the struggle and the extra effort that has to be put into very commonplace things.

I am optimistic. But I also know that, with time, I'm beginning to fight issues of aging as well as long-term paralysis.

Obviously, because of my disability, I need assistance. But I have always tried to overcome the limitations of my condition and lead as full a life as possible. I have traveled the world, from the Antarctic to zero gravity.

In my own home, where I've been able to create an environment that works for me, I'm hardly disabled at all. I still have an impairment, and there are obviously some very restrictive things about that, but the impact of disability is less.

Blindness has not been for me a total misfortune; it should not be seen in a pathetic way. It should be seen as a way of life: one of the styles of living.

There are many role models I've been around, and kind of the biggest one - there's a show called 'Push Girls,' with all women in wheelchairs, and they're all really good friends of mine. And one, Angela Rockwood, is still modeling, in a wheelchair. After a car accident.

Technically I can get out of my wheelchair and crawl around and do things, but when I've traveled and they've lost my wheelchair in transit, I feel like I need to be bound to it. My functionality and autonomy are often bound to this.

Living in the present moment means living according to truth and principle (but not according to hard rigid dogma) flexibly applied in the particular way required by the immediate situation in which you are. Such a way of living leaves you free, not ruled tyrannically by imposed regulations which may not at all suit the particular case.

On the first day I got my wheelchair, I was also given all my clothes for the next day, a little pile on the chair. I was so proud of myself for getting it all on - the socks and everything. Dressing is a struggle, and it can take up to an hour and a half.

Only three per cent of people are born with a disability; the rest acquire it through accident or illness, but people come out of it. Thanks to medical advances, bodies heal.

It was already hard enough growing up in the Philippines but imagine being blind, that's 10 times harder.

I'm getting to the end of my magnifying glasses now. One eye's gone completely. The other is gradually dimming. Dimming - that sounds very dramatic, doesn't it? I'm so lucky. I can still make a living - and the same kind of living.

We cannot pick a lifestyle and tell two generations after us to live like that. It is impossible.