Top 100 Temple Grandin Quotes
#1. Many autistic children like to smell things, and smell may provide more reliable information about their surroundings than either vision or hearing.
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#2. People can live up to high standards, but they can't live up to perfection.
Temple Grandin
#3. What would happen if the autism gene was eliminated from the gene pool?
You would have a bunch of people standing around in a cave, chatting and socializing and not getting anything done.
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#4. I think that the definition of autism is too broad. You got to remember, autism definition is a behavioral profiling.
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#6. In the 50s and 60s, kids were taught how to shake hands. They were taught how to have manners. There needs to be a lot more of that kind of stuff because the autistic mind doesn't pick up social things and subtle cues.
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#7. 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.'
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#8. Autism's an important part of who I am, but I'm a college professor and an animal scientist first. And I wouldn't want to change 'cause I like the logical way I think.
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#9. 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.
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#10. 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.
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#11. I think that autistic brains tend to be specialized brains. Autistic people tend to be less social. It takes a ton of processor space in the brain to have all the social circuits.
Temple Grandin
#12. 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.
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#13. Half of Silicon Valley's got a little bit of autism.
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#14. 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.
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#15. The people that were socially awkward from my generation, they all had paper routes and that taught them the discipline of work.
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#17. People on the autistic spectrum tend to get fixated on what they think.
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#18. There tends to be a lot of autism around the tech centers ... when you concentrate the geeks, you're concentrating the autism genetics.
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#19. 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.
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#20. There is a tremendous range of children with a PDD label.
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#21. My problems are sort of more on a nuisance level. I can't stand scratchy clothes, I've got to have soft kinds of cotton against my skin, and I don't know why some 100% cotton t-shirts itch and others don't; it has something to do with the weave.
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#22. We raise them for us; that means we owe them some respect. nature is creul but we dont have to be. i wouldnt want to have my guts ripped out by a lion. i'd much rather die in a slaughter house if it were done right.
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#23. I think a brain can be made "more thinking" or made "more emotional." At what point does this become abnormal? Autism in its milder variants, I think, is part of normal human variation.
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#24. The squeeze machine is not going to cure anybody, but it may help them relax; and a relaxed person will usually have better behavior.
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#25. 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.
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#26. You can't punish a child who is acting out because of sensory overload.
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#27. Intense stereotypies - stereotypies an animal spends hours a day doing - almost never occur in the wild,
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#28. The world needs different kinds of minds to work together.
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#29. You simply cannot tell other people they are stupid, even if they really are stupid.
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#32. My mind sort of works like a search engine. You ask me something, and I start seeing pictures.
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#34. 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.
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#35. Children between the ages of five to ten years are even more variable. They are going to vary from very high functioning, capable of doing normal school work, to nonverbal who have all kinds of neurological problems.
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#36. 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
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#37. I use my mind to solve problems and invent things.
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#38. I strongly recommend that students with autism get involved in special interest clubs in some of the areas they naturally excel at. Being with people who share your interests makes socializing easier.
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#39. If I could snap my fingers and be nonautistic, I would not. Autism is part of what I am.
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#40. 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.
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#41. 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.
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#42. I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we've got to do it right. We've got to give those animals a decent life and we've got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect.
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#43. In a noisy place I can't understand speech, because I cannot screen out the background noise.
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#44. 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.
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#45. One of the places where research is needed is all the sensory problems. And you get sensory problems not just with autism, but with dyslexia, learning problems, ADHD, attention deficit, you know, things like sound sensitivity, problems with fluorescent lighting.
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#46. 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.
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#47. 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.
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#48. I don't want my thoughts to die with me, I want to have done something. I'm not interested in power, or piles of money. I want to leave something behind. I want to make a positive contribution - know that my life has meaning.
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#49. I'd rather see a kid get fixated on something they can turn into a career.
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#50. Autistic children are very difficult to take care of, especially severely autistic ones. When I was 4, I had almost no language; when I was 3, I had none at all.
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#52. Children who are visual thinkers will often be good at drawing, other arts, and building things with building toys such as Legos.
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#53. I would not be here now if I did not have anti-depressants.
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#54. My Advice is: You always have to keep persevering.
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#55. 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
#56. We have got to work on keeping these children engaged with the world.
Temple Grandin
#57. I'm seeing too many geeky, nerdy kids get addicted to video games and they're going nowhere. It's making me crazy.
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#58. What do I do when I go home? Work. That's basically my social life. I'm married to work.
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#59. I think the core criterion is the social awkwardness, but the sensory issues are a serious problem in many, many cases of autism, and they make it impossible to operate in the environment where you're supposed to be social.
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#60. Medication should never be considered the only tool for helping a person.
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#61. When I was younger, I was looking for this magic meaning of life.
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#62. If I did not have my work, I would not have any life.
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#63. If you have autism in the family history, you still vaccinate. Delay it a bit, space them out.
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#64. I have been on the same dose of anti-depressants for 15 years, and my nerves still go up and down in cycles; but my nerves are cycling at a lower level than they were before.
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#65. Engineering is easy - it's the people problems that are hard.
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#66. 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
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#68. 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.
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#69. 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.
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#70. [T]he only place on earth where immortality is provided is in libraries. This is the collective memory of humanity.
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#71. In special education, there's too much emphasis placed on the deficit and not enough on the strength.
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#72. Animals like novelty if they can choose to investigate it; they fear novelty if you shove it in their faces.
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#73. Research has shown that a barren environment is much more damaging to baby animals than it is to adult animals. It does not hurt the adult animals the same way it damages babies.
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#74. The most important thing people did for me was to expose me to new things.
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#75. I know a number of autistic adults that are doing extremely well on Prozac.
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#77. It's OK to be an eccentric; it's not OK to be a rude and dirty eccentric.
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#79. As you may know, some of the stereotyped behaviors exhibited by autistic children are also found in zoo animals who are raised in a barren environment.
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#80. 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.
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#81. Teachers who work with autistic children need to understand associative thought patterns.
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#82. 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
#83. People are getting too far away from the real-world. Politics is just ridiculous, it's totally dysfunctional.
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#84. It is important that our relationship with farm animals is reciprocal. We owe animals a decent life and a painless death. I have observed that the people who are completely out of touch with nature are the most afraid of death ...
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#85. I believe there is a reason such as autism, severe manic-depression, and schizophrenia remain in our gene pool even though there is much suffering as a result.
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#86. Research is starting to show that a child should be engaged at least 20 hours a week. I do not think it matters which program you choose as long as it keeps the child actively engaged with the therapist, teacher, or parent for at least 20 hours a week.
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#87. I was expected to sit at the table, learn how to eat properly.
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#88. My grandfather was an engineer who invented the automatic pilot for airplanes.
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#89. I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get the words out, so I would just scream.
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#90. You can be honest without sharing your opinions on everything.
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#91. I replaced emotional complexity with visual and intellectual complexity. I questioned everything and looked to logic, science, and intellect for answers.
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#92. I am also a believer in an integrated treatment approach to autism.
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#93. When kids are really little, they all look the same. No speech, no social relatedness, cannot emphasize enough the importance of early educational intervention.
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#94. 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.
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#95. My mind can always separate the two. Even when I am very upset, I keep reviewing the facts over and over until I can come to a logical conclusion.
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#96. Computerized medical records will enable statistical analysis to be used to determine which treatments are most effective.
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#97. The worst thing you can do is nothing. (re: teaching children with autism)
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#98. Neither living nor learning was good without order.
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#99. My mind works like Google for images. You put in a key word; it brings up pictures.
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#100. Complicating matters even further, on a day-to-day basis, in the same individual, the sensory sensitivities can change, especially when the person is tired or stressed. These
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