I don't have any handicap. I am all handicap.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of overcoming personal limitations and embracing one's challenges as part of one's identity.
In this quote, Lyndon B. Johnson expresses a profound sense of resilience and self-acceptance. By stating that he is 'all handicap,' he acknowledges that every individual has their own struggles and difficulties, and rather than viewing them as limitations, he sees them as intrinsic aspects of his identity. This perspective encourages others to confront their own challenges with courage and to understand that true strength lies in embracing one's vulnerabilities.
In practice
In a motivational speech addressing students with disabilities, this quote can inspire them to embrace their uniqueness.
You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result.
Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time.
We do this in order to slow down aggression. We do this to increase the confidence of the brave people of South Vietnam who have bravely born this brutal battle for so many years with so many casualties. And we do this to convince the leaders of North Vietnam-and all who seek to share their conquest-of a simple fact: We will not be defeated. We will not grow tired. We will not withdraw either openly or under the cloak of a meaningless agreement.
So far are we generally from thinking what we often say of the shortness of life, that at the time when it is necessarily shortest we form projects which we delay to execute, indulge such expectations as nothing but along train of events can gratify, and suffer those passions to gain upon us which are only excusable in the prime of life.
You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered.
If government is to serve any purpose it is to do for others what they are unable to do for themselves.
As a black, you find you have to be two or three times better than a white even to play. And when it comes to front-office jobs, management believes you'll never be as good.
The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.
The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity.
If I profess with loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except that little point which the world and the Devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.
Go out and do something. It isn’t your room that’s a prison, it’s yourself.
I couldn't find anyone doing something about the astounding injustices women were experiencing, so I decided to do something myself. I cannot tell you how many people ridiculed my efforts.
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