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1 " The world needs all types of minds. "
― Temple Grandin
2 " 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 , Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism
3 " 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. "
4 " 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. "
5 " It is human nature to strive. "
6 " 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. "
7 " 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 , Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals
8 " I believe that the place where an animal dies is a sacred one. There is a need to bring ritual into the conventional slaughter plants and use as a means to shape people's behavior. It would help prevent people from becoming numbed, callous, or cruel. The ritual could be something very simple, such as a moment of silence. In addition to developing better designs and making equipment to insure the humane treatments of all animals, that would be my contribution. "
9 " 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 , The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum
10 " Being negative is natural and being 100 percent positive takes work. "
11 " 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. "
― Temple Grandin , The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism & Asperger's
12 " 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. "
13 " If I could snap my fingers and be nonautistic, I would not. Autism is part of what I am. "
14 " Instead of making the children do good behaviors by threatening to punish them if they don't, the teachers watch the children until they spontaneously do a good thing and give them rewards to reinforce the behavior and make them more likely to do that behavior again in the future. "
15 " In dealing with autism, I'm certainly not saying we should lose sight of the need to work on deficits, But the focus on deficits is so intense and so automatic that people lose sight of the strengths. "
16 " Neuroanatomy isn't destiny. Neither is genetics. They don't define who you will be. But they do define who you might be. They define who you can be. "
17 " Behavioral trainers never talk about vices and depravity. Behaviorists are some of the most "optimistic' teachers and trainers there are, because if a person or an animal isn't learning, a behaviorist is trained to examine what "he" is doing wrong, not what the person or animal is doing wrong. This means that behavioral teachers and trainers don't blame the student. "
18 " Positive control is the opposite (of aversive control). Even though the teacher or psychologist has created an environment that "controls" the persons behavior through positive reinforcement, the person doesn't feel like he's being controlled probably because he is getting reinforced for behaviors he didn't "have" to do ... described as those that we 'like' or 'chose' to engage in. "
19 " How many people would even try to be Jane Goodall today? Jane Goodall was a superb fieldworker who lived with animals, observed them closely, and understood them. She did her work in the field, not behind a computer making mathematical models of chimpanzee population. "
20 " I am different, not less. "
