Grandin Quotes & Sayings

I was fascinated with optical illusions. — Temple Grandin

In fact, there are autism clusters, you know, around some of the big tech centers. You take two socially awkward computer programmers and put them together, that can kind of concentrate the autistic genes. — Temple Grandin

But my favorite of Einstein's words on religion is "Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind." I like this because both science and religion are needed to answer life's great questions. — Temple Grandin

I had people in my life who didn't give up on me: my mother, my aunt, my science teacher. I had one-on-one speech therapy. I had a nanny who spent all day playing turn-taking games with me. — Temple Grandin

I'd rather see a kid get fixated on something they can turn into a career. — Temple Grandin

What parents and teachers and caregivers did with me that actually worked and a lot of that was the old fashion 50s upbringing. They just gave the instruction when I did something wrong - life was more structured. So basically it's [my work] based on experiences with me that worked and it was teachers and parents that made me have those experiences. — Temple Grandin

Mais c'est renfantillage - this is childishness!' we heard de Grandin pant as we closed in and sought a chance to seize his skeleton-like antagonist. 'He who fights an imp of Satan as if he were human is a fool!'
("The Man In Crescent Terrace") — Seabury Quinn

Computerized medical records will enable statistical analysis to be used to determine which treatments are most effective. — Temple Grandin

In special education, there's too much emphasis placed on the deficit and not enough on the strength. — Temple Grandin

Unfortunately, most people never observe the natural cycle of birth and death. They do not realize that for one living thing to survive, another living thing must die. — Temple Grandin

I've worked with tons of people that I know who are on the spectrum - but now I think severe autism has really increased. — Temple Grandin

I can explain how a person with autism thinks. I am very, very interested in how people think. It's been a gradual process of learning more and more about how my thinking process is different. You know it's bottom up - you take specific examples to make concepts and then I put them in categories. — Temple Grandin

Curiosity is the other side of caution. — Temple Grandin

If language naturally evolves to serve the needs of tiny rodents with tiny rodent brains, then what's unique about language isn't the brilliant humans who invented it to communicate high-level abstract thoughts. What's unique about language is that the creatures who develop it are highly vulnerable to being eaten. — Temple Grandin

Normal people have an incredible lack of empathy. They have good emotional empathy, but they don't have much empathy for the autistic kid who is screaming at the baseball game because he can't stand the sensory overload. Or the autistic kid having a meltdown in the school cafeteria because there's too much stimulation. — Temple Grandin

While bullying happens to both males and females on the spectrum, girls, particularly, can be judgmental. Dr. Grandin advocates that some gifted children with autism should be allowed to skip high school and go right to college and I couldn't agree with her more. We flourish much better in an environment where the emphasis is on academic achievement and not socializing. Of course we need to learn to socialize, but through shared interests with like-minded individuals, not by being thrown to the lions. Emotionally, we require an atmosphere of tolerance and non-judgment. — Rudy Simone

One big question that's come up is: Has autism increased on the mild side of things? I don't think so - they've always been here. Some of this is increased detection. — Temple Grandin

My life - autism's an important part of it, but it bothers me when I see kids where autism and their autism is the only thing they think about. I'd rather have them think about, you know, some art work they were gonna do or some science they wanted to do. — Temple Grandin

Neither living nor learning was good without order. — Temple Grandin

Label-locked thinking can affect treatment. For instance, I heard a doctor say about a kid with gastrointestinal issues, "Oh, he has autism. That's the problem" - and then he didn't treat the GI problem. — Temple Grandin

I can remember being bullied and teased. It was absolutely horrible. I got kicked out of ninth grade for throwing a book at a girl who teased me. It was absolutely terrible. — Temple Grandin

Animals make us Human. — Temple Grandin

I've got a lot of other people who do a lot of things for me, so I've gotten to a part in my career where I'm doing a lot of talks because I want to get kids turned on. I want to see these kids, these geeky nerdy kids, go out there and do something. — Temple Grandin

I believe that the best way to create good living conditions for any animal, whether it's a captive animal living in a zoo, a farm animal or a pet, is to base animal welfare programs on the core emotion systems in the brain. My theory is that the environment animals live in should activate their positive emotions as much as possible, and not activate their negative emotions any more than necessary. If we get the animal's emotions rights, we will have fewer problem behaviors ... All animals and people have the same core emotion systems in the brain. — Temple Grandin

Mild autism can give you a genius like Einstein. If you have severe autism, you could remain nonverbal. You don't want people to be on the severe end of the spectrum. But if you got rid of all the autism genetics, you wouldn't have science or art. All you would have is a bunch of social 'yak yaks.' — Temple Grandin

One of my sensory problems was hearing sensitivity, where certain loud noises, such as a school bell, hurt my ears. It sounded like a dentist drill going through my ears. — Temple Grandin

Animals like novelty if they can choose to investigate it; they fear novelty if you shove it in their faces. — Temple Grandin

preserving the essence, in fact the breath - when it opened, his museum displayed Thomas Edison's last exhalation, captured by his son in a test tube at Ford's request - of a more durable American experience. — Greg Grandin

A treatment method or an educational method that will work for one child may not work for another child. The one common denominator for all of the young children is that early intervention does work, and it seems to improve the prognosis. — Temple Grandin

I'm seeing too many kids where they get fixated on their own autism. I'd rather have them get fixated that they like programming computers or they like art or they want to sing in the church choir or they want to train dogs, you know, something that they can turn into a career. — Temple Grandin

In an ideal world the scientist should find a method to prevent the most severe forms of autism but allow the milder forms to survive. After all, the really social people did not invent the first stone spear. It was probably invented by an Aspie who chipped away at rocks while the other people socialized around the campfire. Without autism traits we might still be living in caves. — Temple Grandin

The word "autism" still conveys a fixed and dreadful meaning to most people - they visualize a child mute, rocking, screaming, inaccessible, cut off from human contact. And we almost always speak of autistic children, never of autistic adults, as if such children never grew up, or were somehow mysteriously spirited off the planet, out of society. — Temple Grandin

Social thinking skills must be directly taught to children and adults with ASD. Doing so opens doors of social understandings in all areas of life. — Temple Grandin

I'm seeing too many kind of socially awkward kids that get through schools and then they can't hold a job because they haven't learned the discipline of get up in the morning. — Temple Grandin

I am much less autistic now, compared to when I was young. I remember some behaviors like picking carpet fuzz and watching spinning plates for hours. I didn't want to be touched. I couldn't shut out background noise. I didn't talk until I was about 4 years old. I screamed. I hummed. But as I grew up, I improved. — Temple Grandin

I'm a visual thinker, really bad at algebra. There's others that are a pattern thinker. These are the music and math minds. They think in patterns instead of pictures. Then there's another type that's not a visual thinker at all, and they're the ones that memorize all of the sports statistics, all of the weather statistics. — Temple Grandin

I'm a visual thinker, not a language-based thinker. My brain is like Google Images. — Temple Grandin

Teachers who work with autistic children need to understand associative thought patterns. — Temple Grandin

Autism is an extremely variable disorder. — Temple Grandin

The big companies are like steel and activists are like heat. Activists soften the steel, and then I can bend it into pretty grillwork and make reforms. — Temple Grandin

Steve Jobs was probably mildly on the autistic spectrum. Basically, you've probably known people who were geeky and socially awkward but very smart. When does geeks and nerds become autism? That's a gray area. Half the people in Silicon Valley probably have autism. — Temple Grandin

I think that the definition of autism is too broad. You got to remember, autism definition is a behavioral profiling. — Temple Grandin

Children who are visual thinkers will often be good at drawing, other arts, and building things with building toys such as Legos. — Temple Grandin

I replaced emotional complexity with visual and intellectual complexity. I questioned everything and looked to logic, science, and intellect for answers. — Temple Grandin

There tends to be a lot of autism around the tech centers ... when you concentrate the geeks, you're concentrating the autism genetics. — Temple Grandin

When something is "all in your mind," people tend to think that it's willful, that it's something you could control if only you tried harder or if you had been trained differently. I'm hoping that the newfound certainty that autism is in your brain and in your genes will affect public attitudes. — Temple Grandin

You have got to keep autistic children engaged with the world. You cannot let them tune out. — Temple Grandin

Sometimes we forget about common sense. Autism is used too much as an excuse for bad behavior. — Temple Grandin

Another visitor described them as "midget hells, where one lies awake and sweats the first half of the night, and frequently between midnight and dawn undergoes a fierce siege of heat-provoking nightmares." They seemed to be "designed by Detroit architects who probably couldn't envision a land without snow."19 Ford managers, said the priest, "never really figured out what country they were in. — Greg Grandin

Kanner had cause and effect backward. The child wasn't behaving in a psychically isolated or physically destructive manner because the parents were emotionally distant. Instead, the — Temple Grandin

You take somebody - one person has definitely got autism, you got another person that maybe has some of those traits and maybe there's some anxiety, depression, some epilepsy or something in the family history. Put them together, you're more likely to have a severely autistic kid than if you don't have any neurological problems in the family history. — Temple Grandin

If by some magic, autism had been eradicated from the face of the Earth, then men would still be socializing in front of a wood fire at the entrance to a cave. — Temple Grandin

There is a tremendous range of children with a PDD label. — Temple Grandin

If I did not have my work, I would not have any life. — Temple Grandin

IT WOULD BE tempting to read the story of Fordlandia and Belterra as a parable of arrogance, — Greg Grandin

It is never too late to expand the mind of a person on the autism spectrum. — Temple Grandin

Boys who cry can work for Google. Boys who trash computers cannot. I once was at a science conference, and I saw a NASA scientist who had just found out that his project was canceled - a project he'd worked on for years. He was maybe sixty-five years old, and you know what? He was crying. And I thought, Good for him. That's why he was able to reach retirement age working in a job he loved. — Temple Grandin

The journalist Walter Lippmann identified in Henry Ford, for all his peculiarity, a common strain of "primitive Americanism." The industrialist's conviction that he could make the world conform to his will was founded on a faith that success in economic matters should, by extension, allow capitalists to try their hands "with equal success" at "every other occupation." "Mr. Ford is neither a crank nor a freak," Lippmann insisted, but "merely the logical exponent of American prejudices about wealth and success. — Greg Grandin

My grandfather was an engineer who invented the automatic pilot for airplanes. — Temple Grandin

For example, the main reason zebras never got domesticated is that they're ultra-high-fear. Zebras may bite people and not let go. They injure more people in zoos than the tigers do.15 — Temple Grandin

All told, U.S. allies in Central America during Reagan's two terms killed over 300,000 people, tortured hundreds of thousands, and drove millions into exile. — Greg Grandin

Who do you think made the first stone spears? The Asperger guy. If you were to get rid of all the autism genetics, there would be no more Silicon Valley. — Temple Grandin

I think one of the worst things schools have done is taken out all of the stuff like art, music, woodworking, sewing, cooking, welding, auto-shop. All these things you can turn into careers. How can you get interested in these careers if you don't try them on a little bit? — Temple Grandin

When I was younger, I was looking for this magic meaning of life. — Temple Grandin

Many autistic children like to smell things, and smell may provide more reliable information about their surroundings than either vision or hearing. — Temple Grandin

The squeeze machine is not going to cure anybody, but it may help them relax; and a relaxed person will usually have better behavior. — Temple Grandin

Nature is cruel, but we don't have to be. — Temple Grandin

I was expected to sit at the table, learn how to eat properly. — Temple Grandin

Fieldwork is probably always more likely to be holistic than lab work or mathematical modeling because in the field you can't get away from the whole when a research project starts. — Temple Grandin

Costs for liability insurance are higher than costs for many procedures. There is a need to reform liability laws to stop out-of-control health care costs. — Temple Grandin

Let's get into talking about how autism is similar animal behavior. The thing is I don't think in a language, and animals don't think in a language. It's sensory based thinking, thinking in pictures, thinking in smells, thinking in touches. It's putting these sensory based memories into categories. — Temple Grandin

You can be honest without sharing your opinions on everything. — Temple Grandin

People can live up to high standards, but they can't live up to perfection. — Temple Grandin

Medication should never be considered the only tool for helping a person. — Temple Grandin

You simply cannot tell other people they are stupid, even if they really are stupid. — Temple Grandin

after centuries of observation scientists are still not exactly sure why the Amazon - unlike other forests, where leaves turn brown during the dry season - grows green and lush when the rain stops or how this reversed pattern of photosynthesis contributes to the broader seasonal distribution of water throughout the region. — Greg Grandin

From a scientific standpoint, Aspergers and autism are one syndrome. Aspergers is part of the autism spectrum, not a separate disorder. — Temple Grandin

I'm seeing too many smart kind of socially awkward kids, a lot milder than I was, not getting employment because they're not learning job skills. — Temple Grandin

People on the autistic spectrum tend to get fixated on what they think. — Temple Grandin

I had problems getting my words out. If people spoke directly to me, I understood what they said. But when the grownups got to yakking really fast by themselves, it just sounded like 'oi oi.' I thought grownups had a separate language. I've now figured out I was not hearing the hard consonant sounds. — Temple Grandin

You can't punish a child who is acting out because of sensory overload. — Temple Grandin

The Internet may be the best thing yet for improving an autistic person's social life. — Temple Grandin

The world needs different kinds of minds to work together. — Temple Grandin

The people that were socially awkward from my generation, they all had paper routes and that taught them the discipline of work. — Temple Grandin

Seeking is a combination of emotions people usually think of as being different: wanting something really good, looking forward to getting something really good and curiosity. Seeking gives you the energy to go after your goals. — Temple Grandin

There was a solid year and a half, perhaps two years, after making 'Temple Grandin,' when I didn't do anything. I just didn't have much patience for roles that were silly, or light, or inconsequential. — Claire Danes

Animals are like autistic savants. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that animals might actually be autistic savants. Animals have special talents normal people don't, the same way autistic people have special talents normal people don't; and at least some animals have special forms of genius normal people don't, the same way some autistic savants have special forms of genius. I think most of the time animal genius probably happens for the same reason autistic genius does: a difference in the brain autistic people share with animals. — Temple Grandin

People wouldn't have become who we are today if we hadn't coevolved with dogs. — Temple Grandin

My thinking pattern always starts with specifics and works toward generalization in an associational and nonsequential way. — Temple Grandin

Pressure is calming to the nervous system. — Temple Grandin

[T]he only place on earth where immortality is provided is in libraries. This is the collective memory of humanity. — Temple Grandin

The thing about being autistic is that you gradually get less and less autistic, because you keep learning, you keep learning how to behave. It's like being in a play; I'm always in a play. — Temple Grandin

Some autistic children cannot stand the sound of certain voices. I have come across cases where teachers tell me that certain children have problems with their voice or another person's voice. This problem tends to be related to high-pitched ladies' voices. — Temple Grandin

Some people with autism who don't talk, all they hear are vowel sounds. Like if I said 'cup,' they might just hear 'uh.' — Temple Grandin

In every character that you play ... I mean, I don't think I'll ever be the type of actor or performer per se who transforms, you know? Like Claire Danes transforms into Temple Grandin - I'm not gonna do that. — Ilana Glazer

There are no files in my memory that are repressed,' she asserted. 'You have files that are blocked. I have none so painful that they're blocked. There are no secrets, no locked doors - nothing is hidden. I can infer that there are hidden areas in other people, so that they can't bear to talk of certain things. The amygdala locks the files of the hippocampus. In me, the amygdala doesn't generate enough emotion to lock the files of the hippocampus. — Oliver Sacks

We owe them [animals] a decent life and a decent death, and their lives should be as low-stress as possible. That's my job. I wish animals could have more than just a low-stress life and a quick, painless death. I wish animals could have a good life, too, with something useful to do. People were animals, too, once, and when we turned into human beings we gave something up. Being close to animals brings some of it back. — Temple Grandin

What I've tried to do is combine both my personal experiences with scientific research. I like to cross the divide between the personal world and the scientific world. — Temple Grandin

In my opinion, one of the greatest animal-welfare problems is the physical abuse of livestock during transportation ... Typical abuses I have witnessed with alarming frequency are; hitting, beating, use of badly maintained trucks, jabbing of short objects into animals, and deliberate cruelty. — Temple Grandin

Engineering is easy - it's the people problems that are hard. — Temple Grandin