Audiences I speak to are often openly hostile, and I know my arguments might fall on deaf ears with 99% of the audience.
I grew up outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in a little town, and went to a regular high school. I was a… very average student in that high school. Then I joined the Navy, and while I was in the Navy, I was in a motorcycle accident and woke up deaf in a hospital.
Success listens only to applause. To all else it is deaf.
Music is universal too. Even deaf people like to dance, love rhythm, and can kind of pick it up.
In effect, I feel like a blind, deaf, and illiterate person working through the sensibilities and multiple, real talents of other people. Everything I do is collaborative.
Metaphorical tone deafness is when people are unable to discern what is of value in something. I think I’m tone deaf to poetry, for instance. Despite having studied it into a second year of university, most of it just leaves me cold.
I grew up with deaf teachers, and I thought all deaf children should have exposure to deaf educators.
I met a girl when I was in third grade. Kids were beating her up – she was deaf – so I walked her home. Her parents were deaf and they gave me the alphabet on a card. I learned it and taught my friends how to do the alphabet – which was outlawed in our school because we used to talk to each other in class.
Inequality within the deaf and hard of hearing community is something I feel really passionate about and always will do.
The deaf community relies so much on eye contact, expression and body language. It’s such a huge part of who we are.
There is no relation to sound for deaf people. It is a totally different mental process.
Often in the past, when we have had a deaf person in the spotlight, we have been portrayed badly. It was up to me to change that.
I have always aspired to be the type of role model who can bridge the deaf and hearing communities.
You need to be able to communicate what you feel – good or bad. But when I feel things are falling on deaf ears, I take a step back.
I am a little deaf now. Without my hearing aids in, I miss a lot of peripheral sounds. I had tinnitus, too, for a while.
I have terrible hearing trouble. I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal proponents deaf.
I was actually tone deaf until I had tumors in my ears – I had very small ear canals – removed. Once they fixed that, I was actually able to sing in a pleasant manner.
I’m particularly proud of my work with the Starkey Hearing Foundation for whom I raised a million dollars in one day on ‘Celebrity Apprentice.’ They do great work around the world helping deaf children in developing countries get proper attention and free hearing aids.
During a visit to California, when a friend of my grandmother’s told my parents that I must be deaf because I was not responding to sounds, my father was absolutely convinced that I was simply being stubborn.
For example, the first time McDonald’s put a deaf person in a commercial they saw a jump in sales. I think that happens with other kinds of disabilities and products and that is something that is being realized more and more.
There are two worlds: the deaf world and the hearing world. There are some people in the deaf community that feel that hearing people look down on us.
Getting bogged down in old stories stops the flow of learning by censoring our perceptions, making us functionally deaf and blind to new information. Once the replay button gets pushed, we no longer form new ideas or conclusions – the old ones are so cozy.
Despair is a cop-out, the ultimate abdication of all responsibility, in which people feel justified in their feelings of impotence. But if, on the other hand, you feel that your work in the world does make a difference and that you do have the power to change things, the nay-sayers will turn a deaf ear.
This meeting was like many of the meetings that I would go to over the course of two years. The only way I can describe it is that, well, the president is like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection.
What the Bleep Do We Know was not written with a deaf person in mind, but when they met me, it clicked with them to have me in it. But that happens with a lot of actors in Hollywood, not just with me.
While taking sign language in high school, one of our assignments was to go out and participate in the deaf community, so I really got to know a lot of the group from that. I felt like they needed a little bit more of a voice because people treat them different just because they’re hearing impaired.
God hears no more than the heart speaks; and if the heart be dumb, God will certainly be deaf.
The court today, just as in 1776, is deaf to the voices of the people and their repeated entreaties: they have become arrogant, contemptuous, highhanded, and literal despots.
Deaf people are struggling to find their favorite show or something that represents them. It’s hard. There are some examples of shows that have a deaf storyline in one episode, like Cold Case, or another show where they are focusing on the cochlear implant or the medical aspect.
I love it when I surprise photographers that, despite the fact that I am deaf, I am capable of meeting their vision. I love it that I can read their body language and know what they do not like and what they do like.
I just think that Stephen Miller is completely tone deaf when it comes to reforming our immigration system.
I am going a bit deaf and I am hoping that technology is going to come on leaps and bounds and that one day I will hear better.
One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.
I ask you: turn a deaf ear to the special interests. Let politics stand down for a while. don’t waste anytime thinking about future elections until we’ve done our jobs here.
The deaf community has shaped me as an artist and a person, and I am very grateful that I have been able to share and create so much art with a group of people I would have never imagined sharing and creating with. It’s a true testament to the power of theater. There are no walls.
Texting has definitely improved the communication between the deaf and hearing communities, but it shouldn’t be… a substitute for learning the language to really connect with someone, especially someone you want to date or have a relationship with.
In Australia, a deaf person attending an interview must take their own interpreter at their own expense, or ask the employer to provide one. Believe me, nothing says ‘I’m the best person for this job’ quite like asking an employer to pay to interview you.
Obama does not need to worry as much as past Democratic presidents about being labeled soft on national security – not after giving the order that led to the assassination of Osama bin Laden. No, his biggest concern is being labeled tone deaf on joblessness and debt.
The way I miss my daughter Esme is to worry about her. It is not a pleasurable longing. It contorts my body and scrambles my brain, makes me stop breathing, clench my jaw and my fists, it makes me frown, and makes me blind and deaf, in fact entirely without sensory perception.
When I was in 2nd or 3rd grade, the drama teacher at my deaf school noticed that I liked to tell stories and had really good expression. I could entertain people with my stories.
Taste is one of the five senses, and the man who tells us with priggish pride that he does not care what he eats is merely boasting of his sad deficiency: he might as well be proud of being deaf or blind, or, owing to a perpetual cold in the head, of being devoid of the sense of smell.
If you are the master be sometimes blind, if you are the servant be sometimes deaf.
France turned a deaf ear to the demands, but Ho had succeeded in attracting great publicity in progressive French circles to the situation in Indochina.
I am truly humbled. Not only that I am going to be known as the final Top Model but as a final Top Model who is deaf! And that is an amazing tagline. This proves that deaf people can do anything and everything.
I’ve always wanted to write a book relating my experiences growing up as a deaf child in Chicago. Contrary to what people might think, it wasn’t all about hearing aids and speech classes or frustrations.
We have our own culture, our own community. A lot of people don’t realize that. They just assume that deaf people are very unfortunate, very disabled, but no.
In the deaf community, there are different types of people who have different philosophies. Some believe that they should only sign. Some believe they should only speak. Some people say you should use cued speech. Some say you should use cochlear implants. Some say you shouldn’t sign. Some people say you should sign.
I searched YouTube for ‘deaf music videos’ and watched them with the sound muted. I noticed that though you could understand the words being signed, the sense of rhythm was lost. That’s when I had the idea to create a video where you could see the sounds you couldn’t hear.
Most profoundly deaf people have speech that is very difficult to understand.
I placed over a thousand deaf people in jobs throughout my career working for the deaf.
