Ability Not Disability Quotes

Everything looks beautiful. The Book of Shhh says that deliria alters your perception, disables your ability to reason clearly, impairs you from making sound judgments. But it does not tell you this: that love will turn the whole world into something greater than itself.

... for every disability you have, you are blessed with more than enough abilities to overcome your challenges.

When you focus on someone's disability you'll overlook their abilities, beauty and uniqueness. Once you learn to accept and love them for who they are, you subconsciously learn to love yourself unconditionally.

I choose not to place "DIS", in my ability.

Everyone, regardless of ability or disability, has strengths and weaknesses. Know what yours are. Build on your strengths and find a way around your weaknesses.

all abilities are paid for with disabilities. perfect health may entail the heavy toll of bovine stupidity. insight into one area involves blind spots in another. i could not have done what i have done as a writer had i been a gifted mathematician or physicist. honesty wrung out of him by pain, he cried out with a loud voice.

It seems to me that people who don’t learn as easily as others suffer from a kind of learning disability—there is something different about the way they comprehend unfamiliar material—but I fail to see how this disability is improved by psychiatric consultation. What seems to be lacking is a technical ability that those of us called ‘good students’ are born with. Someone should concretely study these skills and teach them. What does a shrink have to do with the process?

Disabilities are not Liabilities but true test of abilities

You're not disabled by the disabilities you have, you are able by the abilities you have.

Some disabled people spend a significant amount of their energy on trying to come across as abled or as not that disabled.

I was slightly brain damaged at birth, and I want people like me to see that they shouldn't let a disability get in the way. I want to raise awareness - I want to turn my disability into ability.

Your mental problem becomes a solution when it can be used to solve problems.

Getting older comes with abilities. Being old comes with disabilities.

We ought to be thankful not for our eyes but for our ability to see.

...Goddamn himself for letting his independence slip away from him. He didn't even know how it had happened, how he had lost the ability to function on his own, or what the hell he was going to do about it now.

In evaluating ourselves, we tend to be long on our weaknesses and short on our strengths.

On athleticism, God knows no favor. It seems rather he is in the business of teaching winners how to lose and losers how to win.

There is something ironic in prejudice against the disabled and their families, because their plight might befall anybody. Straight men are unlikely to wake up gay one morning, and white children don't become black; but any of us could be disabled in an instant. People with disabilities make up the largest minority in America; they constitute 15 percent of the population, though only 15 percent of those were born with their disability and about a third are over sixty-five. Worldwide, some 550 million people are disabled. The disability-rights scholar Tobin Siebers has written, "The cycle of life runs in actuality from disability to temporary ability back to disablity, and that only if you are among the most fortunate.

In fact, sometimes I was sure that the reason people stared at you with your crutches and wheelchair had nothing to do with your disabilities, and everything to do with the fact that you had abilities that they only dreamed of.

Notice the difference: A child’s disability is the focus in traditional classroom settings, but his abilities are the focus in the homeschool environment.

If you have a Disability, don't let people Dis your Ability.

My ability is greater than my disability.

You really don't have to subscribe to the life that had been written for you.

There is no talking rationally, using logic or facts, with someone under the spell of the psychic epidemic, as their ability to reason and to use discernment has been disabled and distorted in service to the psychic pathogen which they carry.

leadership is about courage and the ability to overcome unsurmountable challenges,

most important characteristics of exceptional learners are their abilities, not their disabilities.

It takes an open minded individual to look beyond a disability, and see, that ability has so much more to offer, than the limitations society tries to place upon them.

Does advanced ability deserve the same investment of time, money, and attention as disability?

You cannot be blessed with the ability to be happy without being cursed with the ability to be unhappy.

In those long-ago days I saw a daughter with a disability. Now I see a beautiful, engaging person with a different ability, one that has blessed her with extra gifts and special perceptions.

Every one of us who was attracted to the poor had a sense of guilt, of responsibility, a feeling that in some way we were living on the labor of others. The fact that we were born in a certain environment, were enabled to go to school, were endowed with the ability to compete with others and hold our own, that we had few physical disabilities—all these things marked us as the privileged in a way.

We all live in the digital poorhouse. We have always lived in the world we built for the poor. We create a society that has no use for the disabled or the elderly, and then are cast aside when we are hurt or grow old. We measure human worth based only on the ability to earn a wage, and suffer in a world that undervalues care and community. We base our economy on exploiting the labor of racial and ethnic minorities, and watch lasting inequities snuff out human potential. We see the world as inevitably riven by bloody competition and are left unable to recognize the many ways we cooperate and lift each other up. But only the poor lived in the common dorms of the county poorhouse. Only the poor were put under the diagnostic microscope of scientific clarity. Today, we all live among the digital traps we have laid for the destitute.

My name is CRPS, or so they say But I actually go by; a few different names. I was once called causalgia, nearly 150 years ago And then I had a new name It was RSD, apparently so. I went by that name because the burn lived inside of me. Now I am called CRPS, because I have so much to say I struggle to be free. I don't have one symptom and this is where I change, I attack the home of where I live; with shooting/burning pains. Depression fills the mind of the body I belong, it starts to speak harsh to self, negativity growing strong. Then I start to annoy them; with the issues with sensitivity, You'd think the pain enough; but no, it wants to make you aware of its trembling disability. I silently make my move; but the screams are loud and clear, Because I enter your physical reality and you can't disappear. I confuse your thoughts; I contain apart of your memory, I cover your perspective, the fog makes it sometimes unbearable to see. I play with your temperature levels, I make you nervous all the time - I take away your independance and take away your pride. I stay with you by the day & I remind you by the night, I am an awful journey and you will struggle with this fight. Then there's a side to me; not many understand, I have the ability to heal and you can be my friend. Help yourself find the strength to fight me with all you have, because eventually I'll get tired of making you grow mad. It will take some time; remember I mainly live inside your brain, Curing me is hard work but I promise you, You can beat me if you feed love to my pain. Find the strength to carry on and feed the fears with light; hold on to the seat because, like I said, it's going to be a fight. But I hope to meet you, when your healthy and healed, & you will silenty say to me - I did this, I am cured is this real? That day could possibly come; closer than I want- After all I am a disease and im fighting for my spot. I won't deny from my medical angle, I am close to losing the " incurable " battle.

It is up to each one of us to immunize ourselves from any disabling bolts of anger and defend ourselves from the thunderstorms of hatred. No matter how maliciously anyone might act towards us, humankinds’ ability to express empathy, compassion, and mercy is the only life-sustaining panacea. Whenever we foster empathy and compassion and display mercy towards other people, we overcome the vilest actions and greatest atrocities committed by other persons. If we love everyone, we can never feel victimized or hate anyone. If we love ourselves, we will never act in a degrading manner.

Aside from wanting to write cracking good books that turn children into lifelong readers, I really want to create stories that enable kids to LOOK at the world around them. To see it for what it is, with wide open, wondering eyes. Our mass media is so horribly skewed. It presents this idea of 'normalcy' which excludes and marginalises so many for an idea of commercial viability which is really nothing but blinkered prejudice. People who are black and Asian and Middle Eastern and Hispanic, people who are gay or transgendered or genderqueer, people who have disabilities, disfigurements or illnesses - all have this vision of a world which does not include them shoved down their throats almost 24-7, and they're told 'No one wants to see stories about people like you. Films and TV shows about people like you won't make money. Stories about straight, white, cisgendered, able-bodied people are universal and everyone likes them. You are small and useless and unattractive and you don't matter.' My worry is that this warped version of 'normal' eventually forms those very same blinkers on children's eyes, depriving them of their ability to see anyone who isn't the same as them, preventing them from developing the ability to empathise with and appreciate and take joy in the lives and experiences of people who are different from them. If Shadows on the Moon - or anything I write - causes a young person to look at their own life, or the life of another, and think, 'Maybe being different is cool' I will die a happy writer. -Guest blog - what diversity means to me

Outside of school, though, we were often defined by our disabilities. We were “handicapped”—a bit like a species. Often when people have a disability, it’s the disability that other people see rather than all the other abilities that coexist with their particular difficulty. It’s why we talk about people being “disabled” rather than “having a disability.” One of the reasons that people are branded by their disability is that the dominant conception of ability is so narrow. But the limitations of this conception affect everyone in education, not just those with “special needs.” These days, anyone whose real strengths lie outside the restricted field of academic work can find being at school a dispiriting experience and emerge from it wondering if they have any significant aptitudes at all.

Just because you had every right to feel sorry for yourself didn’t mean you ever took the opportunity to do so. In fact, sometimes I was sure that the reason people stared at you with your crutches and wheelchair had nothing to do with your disabilities, and everything to do with the fact that you had abilities they only dreamed of.

In high school, I confided in a nurse that I was trying to be sexually active, but bladder and bowel incontinence were affecting my ability to be intimate with my then-partner. Their only solution was to suggest that there would be people who would be “into that.” My dating pool was instantly reduced to people who would fetishize me.

disability is not an ability

I wanted to share the realities of living with a disability since birth. My book is my attempt to promote increased inclusion and greater understanding of individual abilities

It's ability, not disability, that counts!

promise you that for every disability you have, you are blessed with more than enough abilities to overcome your challenges.

Disability is not an inability, nor is it an ability to be lazy but an ability to do something.

I did just what society asked of me: I tried to show the world my ability and denied myself my disability.

I, too, feed into the idealization of youth and the ability to do things ‘young people should be able to do’ despite the fact that I know that’s ableist bullshit.

Our inabilities to constantly reinvent us would disable new possibilities.

There is no such thing as a disability, and we say diffability, because we know you are all different, and possess different abilities.

promise you that for every disability you have, you are blessed with more than enough abilities to overcome your challenges. God

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

It is my hope to help children like my son, burst through the ceiling of their disabilities, into the universe of their abilities.

In the context of the autism world (and my outlook in general) this is were I stand equality is for everyone, everybody in the world - I look at both sides of the the coin and take into account peoples realities (that makes me neutral/moderate/in the middle). That means that you look in a more three dimensional perspective of peoples diverse realities you cannot speak for all but one can learn from EACH OTHER through listening and experiencing. I also try my best to live with the good cards I was given not over-investing in my autism being the defining factor of my being (but having a healthy acknowledgement of it) that it's there but also thinking about other qualities I have such as being a writer, poet and artist. I do have disability, I do have autism and I have a "mild" learning disability that is true but I a human being first and foremost. And for someone to be seen as person equal to everyone else is a basic human right.

In the years since then there has been a gradual change in the climate of ideas with regard to the disabled. It had begun to dawn on the able-bodied world that it is possible to combine an unsatisfactory body with a perfectly satisfactory brain, and a personality at any rate as satisfactory as most other people's. Trailing somewhat behind that, but now beginning to emerge also, is the much more startling idea that the disabled may not only have normal brains and the ability to hold down normal jobs and the wish to join in normal recreations and be accepted for ourselves, just as people, but normal emotions also. That we may have the same emotional needs as anybody else, and the ability to satisfy those needs in each other, or even in the able-bodied.

This is why reading representations of disability as simultaneously metaphor and materiality is so essential -- disability oscillates between abstraction and material meanings due to its social history.

Allison of RADAD: The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and Disability The ticks of Lyme Suck my blood of time And leave me rather drowsy. My feet move like tar With Epstein-Barr And I wake up feeling lousy. I fall asleep in my Pepsi With Narcolepsy To the chagrin of the soda jerk. My Chronic Fatigue (and thespian ability) puts me in the big league (of insurance fraud disability) So who the fuck needs to work!

I offered to pass along information about NEHSA to Heidi so she can let her patients know about it. I don’t have any scientific or clinical data to back this up, but I think snow-boarding is the most effective rehabilitative tool I’ve experienced. It forces me to focus on my abilities and not my disability, to overcome huge obstacles, both physical and psychological, to stay up on that board and get down the mountain in one piece. And each time I get down the mountain in one piece, I gain a real confidence and sense of independence I haven’t felt anywhere else since the accident, a sense of true well-being that stays with me well beyond the weekend. And whether snowboarding with NEHSA has a measurable and lasting therapeutic effect for people like me or not, it’s a lot more fun than drawing cats and picking red balls up off a tray

Late arrival, make-up tests, and accessible seating are all standard disability accommodations central to a student's ability to learn. These are not optional, nor should they be denied on the basis of cost, convenience, or ignorance.

We believe that as teachers, our job is not to establish a student’s ‘potential’, but to move them onwards from wherever they may be. In other words, the focus should be on the quality of our instruction, not on students’ ‘ability’ or ‘disability’.

No matter what you are dealing with, your goal should be to maximize the resources and capabilities you do have. If you’ve suffered a freak injury or received a diagnosis that changes everything, what does your new maximum effort level look like? A lot of people bide their time and wait to see what happens next, but a year or two later, they find they are still waiting. With every unfortunate turn in life, no matter how heavy the weight, you have to be committed to pushing back against that pressure with effort. No matter your age, abilities, disabilities, or responsibilities, we must all stay committed to finding our new benchmarks. Because not only does that keep your mind engaged and your demons at bay, you actually might achieve things the old you never could have conceived.

All bodies are caught in the bindings of ability, race, class, gender, sexual orientation, sexuality, citizenship. We are powerful not despite the complexities of our identities, but because of them. Only universal, collective access can lead to universal, collective liberation.

Speculation was now news. News had been confused with fact. Fact had been replaced by expert opinion. People had been replaced by their biographies. Ability had been replaced by disability. Thinking had been replaced by psychology. History had been reduced to story. And while the news media pumped out a new story every week on things that could kill you, Hollywood simultaneously created stories that showed that everything could be prevailed over. Meaning, he said, was so malleable that it could be turned inside out, and no one would know the difference—and it would—and, just like the universe that had expanded to its maximum size, everything that had ever been would happen in reverse and revert back to its original form until existence would disappear without leaving a trace of itself as the Big Bang backfired.

Our democracy cannot survive its current downward drift into tribalism, extremism, and seething resentment. Today it’s “us versus them” in America. Politics is little more than blood sport. As a result, our willingness to believe the worst about everyone outside our own bubble is growing, and our ability to solve problems and seize opportunities is shrinking. We have to do better. We have honest differences. We need vigorous debates. Healthy skepticism is good. It saves us from being too naive or too cynical. But it is impossible to preserve democracy when the well of trust runs completely dry. The freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the checks and balances in our Constitution were designed to prevent the self-inflicted wounds we face today. But as our long history reveals, those written words must be applied by people charged with giving life to them in each new era. That’s how African Americans moved from being slaves to being equal under the law and how they set off on the long journey to be equal in fact, a journey we know is not over. The same story can be told of women’s rights, workers’ rights, immigrants’ rights, the rights of the disabled, the struggle to define and protect religious liberty, and to guarantee equality to people without regard to their sexual orientation or gender identity.

There is a continuum of genetic influence from one extreme to the other. In other words, as we find genes associated with reading disability, these DNA differences will not be ‘for’ reading disability. They will be related to the entire distribution of reading ability. These DNA differences will make good readers read slightly less well than other good readers without these genetic variants. Conversely, as we find genes associated with reading ability, the same genes will predict reading problems.

In the play of living we engage in three fundamental forms of action. We begin things, we continue to be engaged in things, and we bring things to an end. We are each obligated to be capable of fulfilling these three forms of action relative to every condition in our experience. To suffer disability relative to any of these three forms of action relative to any condition in our experience is to accumulate a tendency relative to that condition. Such is the way we develop our conventional "karmas." By virtue of such accumulations we are obliged to suffer repetitions of circumstances, in this life and from life to life, until we overcome the liability in our active relationship to each condition that binds us. In the manifest process of existence, we and all other functions in the play are under the same lawful obligation to create, sustain, and destroy conditions or patterns that arise. The inhibition or suppression of the ability to create conditions (or to realize that conditions are your creation and responsibility) is reflected as "tamas," or rigidity, inertia, indolence, and laziness. The inhibition or suppression of the ability to sustain (or to realize that the maintenance of conditions is your responsibility) is reflected as "rajas," or unsteadiness of life and attention, and negative and random excitation or emotion. The inhibition or suppression of the ability to destroy or become free of conditions (or to realize that the cessation of conditions is your responsibility) is reflected as artificial "sattwa," sentimentality, romance, sorrow, bondage to subjectivity, and no comprehension of the mystery of death.

When Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling published the piece "TERF Wars" on her blog in the summer of 2020, she specifically mentioned her fear that many transgender men are actually Autistic girls who weren't conventionally feminine, and have been influenced by transactivists on the internet into identifying out of womanhood. In presenting herself as defending disabled "girls," she argued for restricting young trans Autistic people's ability to self-identity and access necessary services and health care. Rowling's perspective (which she shares with many gender critical folks) is deeply dehumanising to both the trans and Autistic communities.

WITH GOD YOU CAN TURN YOUR impeaching importunities into optimal opportunities. Frightful frustration into fortifying fortunes. Humble attitudes into higher altitudes .Distress disabilities into affluent abilities. Incalculable incapacity into calibrated capabilities. Protracted poverty into pronounced prosperity. Subtracting adversity into multiplying advantage. Intimidating invalidities into valuable validities. Weeping profession into a winning prowess .worrisome weariness into wholesome health. Multiple miseries into a myriad of treasures. Possessive problems into progressive productivity. Earthly human co-incidence into heavenly divine “God-incidence”.

In my own periods of darkness, in the underworld of the soul, I find myself frequently overcome and amazed by the ability of people to befriend each other, to love their intimate partners and parents and children, and to do what they must do to keep the machinery of the world running. I knew a man, injured and disabled by a car accident, who was employed by a local utility. For years after the crash he worked side by side with another man, who for his part suffered with a degenerative neurological disease. They cooperated while repairing the lines, each making up for the other’s inadequacy. This sort of everyday heroism is the rule, I believe, rather than the exception. Most individuals are dealing with one or more serious health problems while going productively and uncomplainingly about their business. If anyone is fortunate enough to be in a rare period of grace and health, personally, then he or she typically has at least one close family member in crisis. Yet people prevail and continue to do difficult and effortful tasks to hold themselves and their families and society together. To me this is miraculous—so much so that a dumbfounded gratitude is the only appropriate response. There are so many ways that things can fall apart, or fail to work altogether, and it is always wounded people who are holding it together. They deserve some genuine and heartfelt admiration for that. It’s an ongoing miracle of fortitude and perseverance

The worst thing women can do for men, is spoil them. I see this all around. A woman thinking that the way to keep a man is by showering him like a baby, giving more than any other woman around could give. It disables men, it creates babies out of men, it removes their ability to be doers and givers. It turns them into sitting ducks. It is the worst thing women can do for men: spoil them. Yes, it ruins them for any other woman; but, not for the good reasons. I never want a woman to come into my son's life and spoil him. I will not let that happen to him. I always tell him: you be with a woman who is your equal, someone you can run with, someone who enables you to be a doer, a giver. Another wolf: someone you can run with.

Anthropologists like Kohrt, Hoffman, and Abramowitz have identified three factors that seem to crucially affect a combatant's transition back into civilian life. The United States seems to rank low on all three. First, cohesive and egalitarian tribal societies do a very good job at mitigating effects of trauma, but by their very nature, many modern societies are exactly the opposite: hierarchical and alienating. America's great wealth, although a blessing in many ways, has allowed for the growth of an individualistic society that suffers high rates of depression and anxiety. Both are correlated with chronic PTSD. Secondly, ex-combatants shouldn't be seen -or be encouraged to see themselves - as victims... Lifelong disability payments for a disorder like PTSD, which is both treatable and usually not chronic, risks turning veterans into a victim class that is entirely dependent on the government for their livelihood... Perhaps most important, veterans need to feel that they're just as necessary and productive back in society as they were on the battlefield... Recent studies of something called 'social resilience' have identified resource sharing and egalitarian wealth distribution as major components of a society's ability to recover from hardship. And societies that rank high on social resilience...provide soldiers with a significantly stronger buffer against PTSD than low-resilience societies. In fact, social resilience is an even better predictor of trauma recovery than the level of resilience of the person himself.

Predominantly inattentive type Perhaps the majority of girls with AD/HD fall into the primarily inattentive type, and are most likely to go undiagnosed. Generally, these girls are more compliant than disruptive and get by rather passively in the academic arena. They may be hypoactive or lethargic. In the extreme, they may even seem narcoleptic. Because they do not appear to stray from cultural norms, they will rarely come to the attention of their teacher. Early report cards of an inattentive type girl may read, "She is such a sweet little girl. She must try harder to speak up in class." She is often a shy daydreamer who avoids drawing attention to herself. Fearful of expressing herself in class, she is concerned that she will be ridiculed or wrong. She often feels awkward, and may nervously twirl the ends of her hair. Her preferred seating position is in the rear of the classroom. She may appear to be listening to the teacher, even when she has drifted off and her thoughts are far away. These girls avoid challenges, are easily discouraged, and tend to give up quickly. Their lack of confidence in themselves is reflected in their failure excuses, such as, "I can't," "It's too hard," or "I used to know it, but I can't remember it now." The inattentive girl is likely to be disorganized, forgetful, and often anxious about her school work. Teachers may be frustrated because she does not finish class work on time. She may mistakenly be judged as less bright than she really is. These girls are reluctant to volunteer for a project orjoin a group of peers at recess. They worry that other children will humiliate them if they make a mistake, which they are sure they will. Indeed, one of their greatest fears is being called on in class; they may stare down at their book to avoid eye contact with the teacher, hoping that the teacher will forget they exist for the moment. Because interactions with the teacher are often anxiety-ridden, these girls may have trouble expressing themselves, even when they know the answer. Sometimes, it is concluded that they have problems with central auditory processing or expressive language skills. More likely, their anxiety interferes with their concentration, temporarily reducing their capacity to both speak and listen. Generally, these girls don't experience this problem around family or close friends, where they are more relaxed. Inattentive type girls with a high IQ and no learning disabilities will be diagnosed with AD/HD very late, if ever. These bright girls have the ability and the resources to compensate for their cognitive challenges, but it's a mixed blessing. Their psychological distress is internalized, making it less obvious, but no less damaging. Some of these girls will go unnoticed until college or beyond, and many are never diagnosed they are left to live with chronic stress that may develop into anxiety and depression as their exhausting, hidden efforts to succeed take their toll. Issues

Instead of concentrating on how we can include the “other,” too often in American Christianity the focus becomes on when, how, and finding the right justifications for excluding the “other.” When I truly begin to appreciate the inclusive nature of Jesus, my heart laments at all the exclusiveness I see and experience. I think of my female friends; women of wisdom, peace, discernment, and character who should be emulated by the rest of us. When I listen and learn from these women, I realize what an amazing leaders they would be in church—but many never will be leaders in that way because they are lacking one thing: male genitals. Wise and godly women have been excluded, not because of a lack of gifting, education, or ability, but because they were born with the wrong private parts. I also think of a man who attended my former church who has an intellectual disability. He was friendly, faithful, and could always be counted on for a good laugh because he had absolutely no filter— yelling out at least six times during each sermon. One time in church my daughter quietly leaned over to tell me she had to go to the bathroom—and, in true form so that everyone heard, he shouted out, “Hey! Pipe it down back there!” It was hilarious. However, our friend has been asked to leave several churches because of his “disruptiveness.” Instead of being loved and embraced for who he is, he has been repeatedly excluded from the people of God because of a disability. We find plenty of other reasons to exclude people. We exclude because people have been divorced, exclude them for not signing on to our 18-page statements of faith, exclude them because of their mode of baptism, exclude them because of their sexual orientation, exclude them for rejecting predestination…we have become a religious culture focused on exclusion of the “other,” instead of following the example of Jesus that focuses on finding ways for the radical inclusion of the “other.” Every day I drive by churches that proudly have “All Are Welcome” plastered across their signs; however, I rarely believe it—and I don’t think others believe it either. Far too often, instead of church being something that exists for the “other,” church becomes something that exists for the “like us” and the “willing to become like us.” And so, Christianity in America is dying.

When a high IQ-test score is accompanied by subpar performance in some other domain, this is thought "surprising," and a new disability category is coined to name the surprise. So, similarly, the diagnostic criterion for mathematics disorder (sometimes termed dyscalculia) in DSM IV is that "Mathematical ability that falls substantially below that expected for the individual's chronological age, measured intelligence, and age-appropriate education" (p. 50)- The logic of discrepancy-based classification based on IQ-test performance has created a clear precedent whereby we are almost obligated to create a new disability category when an important skill domain is found to be somewhat dissociated from intelligence. It is just this logic that I exploited in creating a new category of disability- dysrationalia.T he proposed definition of the disability was as follows: Dysrationalia is the inability to think and behave rationally despite adequate intelligence. It is a general term that refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders manifested by significant difficulties in belief formation, in the assessment of belief consistency, and/or in the determination of action to achieve one's goals. Although dysrationalia may occur concomitantly with other handicapping conditions (e.g., sensory impairment), dysrationalia is not the result of those conditions. The key diagnostic criterion for dysrationalia is a level of rationality, as demonstrated in thinking and behavior, that is significantly below the level of the individual's intellectual capacity (as determined by an individually administered IQ test).

While the overall systems of heterosexism and ableism are still with us, they have adapted in limited ways. These adaptations are held up as reassurance to those who fought long and hard for a particular change that equality has now been achieved. These milestones—such as the recognition of same-sex marriage, the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Title 9, the election of Barack Obama—are, of course, significant and worthy of celebration. But systems of oppression are deeply rooted and not overcome with the simple passage of legislation. Advances are also tenuous, as we can see in recent challenges to the rights of LGBTQI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, and intersex) people. Systems of oppression are not completely inflexible. But they are far less flexible than popular ideology would acknowledge, and the collective impact of the inequitable distribution of resources continues across history. COLOR-BLIND RACISM What is termed color-blind racism is an example of racism’s ability to adapt to cultural changes.3 According to this ideology, if we pretend not to notice race, then there can be no racism. The idea is based on a line from the famous “I Have a Dream” speech given by Dr. Martin Luther King in 1963 during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. At the time of King’s speech, it was much more socially acceptable for white people to admit to their racial prejudices and belief in white racial superiority. But many white people had never witnessed the kind of violence to which blacks were subjected. Because the struggle for civil rights was televised, whites across the nation watched in horror as black men, women, and children were attacked by police dogs and fire hoses during peaceful protests and beaten and dragged away from lunch counters.

Our democracy cannot survive its current downward drift into tribalism, extremism, and seething resentment. Today it’s “us versus them” in America. Politics is little more than blood sport. As a result, our willingness to believe the worst about everyone outside our own bubble is growing, and our ability to solve problems and seize opportunities is shrinking. We have to do better. We have honest differences. We need vigorous debates. Healthy skepticism is good. It saves us from being too naive or too cynical. But it is impossible to preserve democracy when the well of trust runs completely dry. The freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the checks and balances in our Constitution were designed to prevent the self-inflicted wounds we face today. But as our long history reveals, those written words must be applied by people charged with giving life to them in each new era. That’s how African Americans moved from being slaves to being equal under the law and how they set off on the long journey to be equal in fact, a journey we know is not over. The same story can be told of women’s rights, workers’ rights, immigrants’ rights, the rights of the disabled, the struggle to define and protect religious liberty, and to guarantee equality to people without regard to their sexual orientation or gender identity. These have been hard-fought battles, waged on uncertain, shifting terrain. Each advance has sparked a strong reaction from those whose interests and beliefs are threatened. Today the changes are happening so fast, in an environment so covered in a blizzard of information and misinformation, that our very identities are being challenged. What does it mean to be an American today? It’s a question that will answer itself if we get back to what’s brought us this far: widening the circle of opportunity, deepening the meaning of freedom, and strengthening bonds of community. Shrinking the definition of them and expanding the definition of us. Leaving no one behind, left out, looked down on. We must get back to that mission. And do it with both energy and humility, knowing that our time is fleeting and our power is not an end in itself but a means to achieve more noble and necessary ends. The American dream works when our common humanity matters more than our interesting differences and when together they create endless possibilities. That’s an America worth fighting—even dying—for. And, more important, it’s an America worth living and working for.

Washington University found that adding a single extra gene dramatically boosted a mouse’s memory and ability. These “smart mice” could navigate mazes faster, remember events better, and outperform other mice in a wide variety of tests. They were dubbed “Doogie mice,” after the precocious character on the TV show Doogie Howser, M.D. Dr. Tsien began by analyzing the gene NR2B, which acts like a switch controlling the brain’s ability to associate one event with another. (Scientists know this because when the gene is silenced or rendered inactive, mice lose this ability.) All learning depends on NR2B, because it controls the communication between memory cells of the hippocampus. First Dr. Tsien created a strain of mice that lacked NR2B, and they showed impaired memory and learning disabilities. Then he created a strain of mice that had more copies of NR2B than normal, and found that the new mice had superior mental capabilities. Placed in a shallow pan of water and forced to swim, normal mice would swim randomly about. They had forgotten from just a few days before that there was a hidden underwater platform. The smart mice, however, went straight to the hidden platform on the first try. Since then, researchers have been able to confirm these results in other labs and create even smarter strains of mice. In 2009, Dr. Tsien published a paper announcing yet another strain of smart mice, dubbed “Hobbie-J” (named after a character in Chinese cartoons). Hobbie-J was able to remember novel facts (such as the location of toys) three times longer than the genetically modified strain of mouse previously thought to be the smartest. “This adds to the notion that NR2B is a universal switch for memory formation,” remarked Dr. Tsien. “It’s like taking Michael Jordon and making him a super Michael Jordan,” said graduate student Deheng Wang. There are limits, however, even to this new mice strain. When these mice were given a choice to take a left or right turn to get a chocolate reward, Hobbie-J was able to remember the correct path for much longer than the normal mice, but after five minutes he, too, forgot. “We can never turn it into a mathematician. They are rats, after all,” says Dr. Tsien. It should also be pointed out that some of the strains of smart mice were exceptionally timid compared to normal mice. Some suspect that, if your memory becomes too great, you also remember all the failures and hurts as well, perhaps making you hesitant. So there is also a potential downside to remembering too much.

Rather than being nonverbal, individuals with NLD generally present with abundant verbal ability, with many showing precocious language development and high levels of vocabulary and general knowledge.

I come to oil country with a book about radicals who wish for the end of pipelines. But that's not what it's about. It's the friction point of prosperity and concern, ability and disability, the loss of bodily presence and the gain of ghost messages. It's misplaced outrage and well-placed courage. It's banjo song and smoke in your eye. Stories hinge there, swinging this way and that.

Instead, “the primary purpose of modern disability antidiscrimination laws is to recognize the social roots of discrimination.”8 The ADA covers not only individuals with a mental or physical impairment, but also those who are regarded as or assumed to have such an impairment that affects their ability to do their job based on some outward difference.9 It is, thus, the “prejudice, hostility, and misunderstandings of others about their health conditions” that impairs some individuals.10 Finally, according to Levi and Klein, “transgender people are often substantially limited not as any inherent result of the condition, but as a result of the negative attitudes of others.”11 Levi and Klein compare transgender identities to other impairments like severe burn scars that provoke discomfort in others. This discomfort causes a negative attitude that affects transgender employees' ability to do their work, similar to a hostile environment in sexual harassment law. Another manifestation of this discrimination is a manager refusing to allow a transgender employee to work with customers or clients out of fear of their reaction. According

Never see adversity as a disability,rather see it as a specia-ability. As an opportunity to believe, an opportunity to accomplish

Ability is a tyranny of the majority. If most people could flap their arms and fly, the inability to do so would be a disability.

In my dictionary, the disability word is crippled, because it does not have “DIS

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector. The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; a Quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President. The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States. No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States. In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected. The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be encreased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them. Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:—"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Being overly sensitive sometimes disables the ability to accept constructive criticism

My kids are my ability to achieve my big dreams, not my disability. For those brief moments, I have changed my beliefs and perceptions about what is possible for me even with a heap of kids, are when I've put dampeners on my dreams, stopped making an effort and metaphorically thrown in the towel. Because when you believe you're disabled, you take away your power, you stop feeling able and being able is the Latin root meaning of power. When you feel like your kids, or your circumstances make you dis-abled for your dreams, you feel powerless... You don't feel able and when you don't feel able, you don't do what's needed to breakthrough. You don't take the actions. You don't even try.

Disability is not what we see or appear, it is all about not doing what one really wanted to do...

Doing so, however, reinforces a problematic “we” that discounts those with disabilities by suggesting all of us occupy failed embodiments in some way without an ability to attend to crip/queer materiality’s nuances of experience.

According to the substantival view, all people are of infinite worth, regardless of their natural or acquired abilities or disabilities, simply because they possess a soul. It may be that certain persons cannot or do not exercise the capacities of their soul. Their intrinsic value, however, is rooted in the fact that they possess a soul, whether or not its capacities are exercised. Responding

Believe in your child's ability or confine them to a disability. The choice is yours.

Since every church is filled with sinners, any congregation will have room for improvement in the arena of justice. However, one of the key characteristics of a church that operates as a hospital for sinners is that it will demonstrate hospitality-the love of a stranger-through continually learning how to grow in exercising justice. In doing so, it will learn to identify and oppose all forms of active oppression, and be vigilantly self-reflective and repentant about passive oppression in its midst. The just church is an accessible hospital for sinners, open to all without regard to degree of need or ability to repay.

Where the cutting has been wholesale, and has lasted, is in Congress—Congress: the first branch of government, closest to the people; Congress, which on our behalf keeps an eye on all those unelected bureaucrats. Congressmen and -women have sabotaged their own institution’s ability to do that for us. They have smashed the tools it possessed to help fashion laws in the public interest. They have crippled their own capacity to come to independent conclusions as to the nature of the problems such laws would address. Congress has been disabled from inside. Most of this happened in one of those revisions of the House of Representatives’ internal rules when an election flipped the majority party. It was January 1995, and a last-minute geyser of campaign cash had delivered an upset Republican victory two months before. Newt Gingrich held the gavel. The very first provision of the new rules he hammered through on January 5 reads: “In the One Hundred Fourth Congress, the total number of staff of House committees shall be at least one-third less than the corresponding total in the One Hundred Third Congress.” Congressional staffers are the citizens’ subject matter experts. Over years, these scientists and auditors and lawyers and military veterans build up historical knowledge on the complex issues that jostle for House and Senate attention. They help members, who have to be generalists, drill down into specifics. Cut staffs, and members lose the bandwidth to craft wise legislation, the expertise to ask telling questions in hearings—the ability to hold oversight hearings at all. The Congressional Research Service, the Government Accountability Office, the Congressional Budget Office all suffered the cuts. The Office of Technology Assessment was abolished—because, in 1995, what new technology could possibly be poised on the horizon? Democrats, when they regained control of the House, did not repair the damage. Today, the number of staff fielding thousands of corporate lobbyists or fact-checking their jive remains lower than it was a quarter century ago.

What is a prayer for those who don't have the ability to kneel; to rotate beads with hands they don't have; or need to see to believe that there is spirituality?

In their ongoing war against evil capitalists, some vengeful Democrats have their eyes on banks, which they blame for making millions of loans that resulted in foreclosures and the 2008 financial crisis. Never mind that it was progressives who forced the government to make these loans to low-income borrowers with poor credit ratings through the Community Reinvestment Act and anti-discrimination laws. They promoted minority home ownership without regard to the owners’ ability to repay, and the result was catastrophic. But being a leftist means never having to say you’re sorry—just pass a misguided policy and blame everyone else when it predictably fails. Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, emboldened by Democrats recapturing control of the House, issued a stern warning to bankers before the 2019 session began. “I have not forgotten” that “you foreclosed on our houses,” she said, and “had us sign on the line for junk and for mess that we could not afford. I’m going to do to you what you did to us.”62 How’s that for good governance—using her newfound power as incoming chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee to punish bank executives for the disaster she and her fellow Democrats caused? Waters is also targeting corporations for allegedly excluding minorities and women from executive positions. Forming a new subcommittee on diversity and inclusion, she immediately held a hearing to discuss the importance of examining the systematic exclusion of women, people of color, persons with disabilities, gays, veterans, and other disadvantaged groups.63 Why concentrate on policies to stimulate economic growth and improve people’s standards of living when you can employ identity politics to demonize your opponents?

Visual impairment including blindness is defined in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA 2004, PL 108–446) as an impairment in vision that, even with correction, adversely affects an individual’s educational performance. The term includes both visual impairments and blindness. Educational services for students with visual impairments are determined by variations of the definition specified in IDEA. This definition encompasses students with a wide range of visual impairments, who may vary significantly in their visual abilities.

Your INABILITY to see your ABILITIES, are causing your DISABILITIES.

Getting a university degree wrecks your ability to get disability payments later in life.

We do know, however, that these differences—really dfferences in style rather than ability—are not handicaps or disabilities (unlike such barriers to learning as poor vision, mild brain damage, emotional disturbance or orthopedic handicap).

It is because of this notion [of species essence] that we demand that a severely brain-damaged person should have the same rights as a university professor, or a physically disabled person the same rights as an Olympian sportsman. They are all 'human', whatever their intellectual and physical abilities.

Dementia is the condition of progressive cognitive impairment, but not a condition of complete cognitive impairment – not for a very long time, if at all. When we engage with people experiencing dementia only on the level of what they cannot do, we disable them even more. There are abilities in dementia. These are and should be recognized as strengths – skills that people can still use to enjoy daily life.

- "It's ability, not disability, that counts

In churches that care about special needs inclusion I have found that the single biggest determinant for a child's success is the strength of the relationship between the church and the child's parents. When church leaders and parents are in general agreement regarding a child's abilities and needs, problems tend to get solved with greater speed and ingenuity. But when parents view their child's special needs as nonexistent or insignificant, it creates extra work (and stress!) for everyone serving that child. This is the reason that it is sometimes easier for churches to successfully include children with complex needs that are obvious than it is for churches to successfully include high-functioning children whose disabilities are less obvious. When parents dismiss a child's legitimate need for even occasional assistance it makes it really hard for the child and the volunteers serving them to experience success.

Block said. “I mean, he’s a professor emeritus. He’s never watched a football game in my conscious memory. The whole picture—it wasn’t the guy I thought I knew.” But the conversation proved critical, because after surgery he developed bleeding in the spinal cord. The surgeons told her that in order to save his life they would need to go back in. But the bleeding had already made him nearly quadriplegic, and he would remain severely disabled for many months and likely forever. What did she want to do? “I had three minutes to make this decision, and I realized, he had already made the decision.” She asked the surgeons whether, if her father survived, he would still be able to eat chocolate ice cream and watch football on TV. Yes, they said. She gave the okay to take him back to the operating room. “If I had not had that conversation with him,” she told me, “my instinct would have been to let him go at that moment because it just seemed so awful. And I would have beaten myself up. Did I let him go too soon?” Or she might have gone ahead and sent him to surgery, only to find—as occurred—that he was faced with a year of “very horrible rehab” and disability. “I would have felt so guilty that I condemned him to that,” she said. “But there was no decision for me to make.” He had decided. During the next two years, he regained the ability to walk short distances. He required caregivers to bathe and dress him. He had difficulty swallowing and eating. But his mind was intact and he had partial use of his hands—enough to write two books and more than a dozen scientific articles. He lived for ten years after the operation. Eventually, however, his difficulties with swallowing advanced to the point where he could not eat without aspirating food particles, and he cycled between hospital and rehabilitation facilities with the pneumonias that resulted. He didn’t want a feeding tube. And it became evident that the battle for the dwindling chance of a miraculous recovery was going to leave him unable ever to go home again. So, just a few months before I’d spoken with Block, her father decided to stop the battle and go home. “We started him on hospice care,” Block said. “We treated his choking and kept him comfortable. Eventually, he stopped eating and drinking. He died about five days later.