Rosemary Mahoney Blind Quotations

One of the most persistent misconceptions about blindness is that it is a curse from God for misdeeds perpetrated in a past life, which cloaks the blind person in spiritual darkness and makes him not just dangerous, but evil.

Aversion toward the blind exists for the same reason that most prejudices exist: lack of knowledge. Ignorance is a powerful generator of fear. And fear slides easily into aggression and contempt.

We always think, 'Well, for a person who's blind, it must be an amazing, joyful miracle if by some chance their sight is restored to them.' Now, this may be true for blind people who lost their vision at a later age. It's rarely true for people who were born blind or who go blind at a very young age.

To me, the remarkable thing is it's pretty much unanimous the way blind people have been perceived in all cultures and for millennia. The first is, if they can't see, they must be stupid. The second one is, and this is a very old one, that blindness is such a terrible thing that it must be a curse from God for some evil that you committed.

I've rarely met a miserable, self-pitying blind person.