Disability
- It’s not about insults or taking each other down. As a person who is deaf, as a woman, as a mom, as a wife, as an actor, I have a voice. And I’m using that voice to make myself heard...and vote.
- I don’t look at them as having terrible birth defects. I look at them as gorgeous. To me that is not a horrible, hideous birth defect. It’s no less beautiful to me.
- I hope to challenge the ideas of beauty in gay culture. Putting a gay disabled character on TV is my number one dream.
- When out of all the poets who received the Pulitzer -- the prize awarded to those who made the biggest contributions to the human spirit -- 38 percent of them were bipolar, how can we simply label it a human disorder? Think how much more they could contribute to the human spirit if they knew it could be used as a gift to humanity, instead of something to hide from humanity?
- It has not been easy, for any mother of a child with mental illness, or all the siblings.
- I think we may need to call [Obamacare] something in the future different, but it is working…Obamacare, no question, has a very bad brand that has been driven intentionally by a lot of misinformation and a lot of paid advertising.
- [Robin Williams] made all these people feel great. And at the same time, knowing that he had this sense of … what I make up in my mind - this low sense of self-worth, of belonging, of loneliness, of pain that all the money in the world can't cure. All the accolades and awards, and all the love from people all over the world … all that love could still not stop that man from saying, 'I am in so much pain.
- Three weeks ago, half the population didn't know what ALS is. Now millions of people do, and that's generated hundreds of thousands of contributors to the cause.
- Did I ever tell my constituents that if they liked their plan they could keep it? I would have if I ever met anybody who liked his or her plan, but that was not my experience, that was not my experience. And it was not my experience as a mother of five, who occasionally has a bad back and the rest of that. I was considered a poor risk, even though I had some resources and thought I was quite strong for having five children. But the insurance company didn’t see it that way.
- Three years ago, I did not imagine my arm would move again. For so many days, it did not. I did exercise after exercise, day after day, until it did. I’m committed to my rehab and I’m committed to my country. And my resolution, standing with the vast majority of Americans who know we can and must be safer, is to cede no ground to those who would convince us the path is too steep, or we too weak.
- We’re getting rid of the D [in PTSD]. PTS is an injury; it’s not a disorder. The problem is when you call it a disorder, [veterans] don’t think they can be treated. An employer says, ‘I don’t want to hire somebody with a disorder.’
- The huge thing about mental health treatment and mental health care is that you’re encouraged to suck things up and deal…There’s a lot of attention on injury or physical problems, but when they’re invisible wounds or mental health issues, then it’s a personal issue.