Temple Grandin Quotes

Mary Temple Grandin is an American professor of animal science at Colorado State University, consultant to the livestock industry on animal behavior, and autism spokesperson. She is one of the first individuals on the autism spectrum to publicly share insights from her personal experience of autism. She invented the "hug box" device to calm those on the autism spectrum. In the 2010 Time 100, an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, she was named in the "Heroes" category. She was the subject of the award-winning, semi-biographical film, Temple Grandin.

✵ 29. August 1947

Temple Grandin photo

Steve Jurvetson from Menlo Park, USA, Rain Man’s Rainbow / CC BY 2.0

Temple Grandin: 30 quotes15 likes

Famous Temple Grandin Quotes

“I am different, not less.”

“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.”

Source: Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism

“Nature is cruel but we don't have to be”

Variant: Nature is cruel, but we don't have to be.
Source: The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism & Asperger's

“If I could snap my fingers and be nonautistic, I would not. Autism is part of what I am.”

“Since I think just in pictures it's sort of hard to think about abstract concepts so I have to have visual images like for example when I was a child I didn't really understand some of the stuff in the Lord's Prayer and y'know when it talks about "the power and the glory"… and I thought "electrical high tension lines, circular rainbow." "Thou art in Heaven"; that didn't make any sense to me but another autistic person says "Well I always pictured God up in Heaven with an easel."”

First Person (TV series) Episode 1 "Stairway to Heaven" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Person_(TV_series)#Season_1

“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.”

Temple Grandin Quotes about life

“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.”

“(About the workplace) Tyrants who get into power make life miserable for everyone.”

page 31 of Developing Talents by Temple Grandin and Kate Duffy

“I won the contract for our company to install new ramps and equipment at Beefland. Building a "Stairway to Heaven" for the animals was more than just constructing a steel ramp-way into a concrete room. All of the workers, myself included, invested ourselves in he project. Sometimes tempers flared, but when the job was completed, we were better friends. As the "stairway" began to take shape, many thoughts crowded in on me. I became aware of how precious life was. I thought about death and I felt close to God. He had given us dominion over the animals so we could make use of them, but I realized now, more than ever, that the animals were His creation too, and, thus, they should be treated with respect. One day my blind roommate visited the plant. She reached over the side of the chute and touched the cattle. She wrote the following prayer after her visit: "The Stairway to Heaven" is dedicated to persons who desire to learn the meaning of life and not to fear death. You, through respect for these animals, can come to respect your fellow man as well. Touch, Listen and Remember."”

Pages 134-135 of Emergence: Labeled Autistic by Temple Grandin and Margaret M. Scariano

“I was attending the American Society of Animal Science meetings when the flood occurred. I first learned about it when I read about it on the front page of USA Today, a national newspaper. I grieved for the "dead" books, the same way most people grieve for a dead relative. The destruction of books upset me because "thoughts died." Even though most of the books are still in other libraries, there are many people at the (Colorado State) university who will never read them. To me, Shakespeare lives if we keep performing his plays. He dies, when we stop performing them. I am my work. If the livestock industry continues to use equipment I have designed, then my "thoughts live" and my life has meaning. If my efforts to improve the treatment of cattle and pigs make real improvements in the world, then life is meaningful.”

“Even today, romantic love is just not part of my life. And you know what? That's okay with me.”

page 26 of The Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships By Temple Grandin, Sean Barron, Veronica Zysk

Temple Grandin Quotes about people

“I believe there is some ultimate ordering force for good in the universe - not a personal thing, not Buddha or Jesus, maybe something like order out of disorder. I like to hope that even if there's no personal afterlife, some energy impression is left in the universe… most people can pass on genes - I can pass on thoughts or what I write.”

Page 282 of An Anthropologist On Mars By Oliver Sacks

“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.”

Source: The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism & Asperger's

“You simply cannot tell other people they are stupid, even if they really are stupid.”

Source: The Way I See It: A Personal Look at Autism & Asperger's

“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.”

"Stairway to Heaven," Thinking in Pictures (1995), p. 202.
Source: Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism
Context: Most people don't realize that the slaughter plant is much gentler than nature. Animals in the wild die from starvation, predators, or exposure. If I had a choice, I would rather go through a slaughter system than have my guts ripped out by coyotes or lions while I was still conscious. 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.

“And another reason to make sure we're not doing atrocious things at the slaughter plant is that if it is too easy to do something really atrocious to an animal; with the poor animal screaming and everything; the person who could do that might not have any problem torturing people. I remember one of the reasons that St. Thomas Aquinas said that we have to treat animals right is so that people themselves don't get corrupted.”

Source: http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/mcdonalds/grandin5.html

“I had auditory sensory problems and touch sensitivity problems, I had no problems with my vision. Other people absolutely cannot stand fluorescent lighting and they're sometimes helped by a thing called the Irlen colored glasses where you try on all kinds of different pale colored glasses until it's easier to read. It stops the problem of the print jiggling on the page.”

in "A Conversation with Temple Grandin" January 20, 2006 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5165123

Temple Grandin Quotes

“I don't like radical anything; left or right. I have a radical dislike of radicals.”

Page 256 of An Anthropologist On Mars By Oliver Sacks

“The worst thing you can do is nothing. (re: teaching children with autism)”

“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.”

Source: Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism

“Animals make us Human.”

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

Source: Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism

“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.”

Source: Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals

“Well, I want to start out that I was lucky in the ‘60s to also be taking a class in Classical Ethology by a professor named Tom Evans, where I learned that operant conditioning does not explain all animal behavior. He explained how fixed action patterns and hardwired instinctual behavior works. And I remember going on a visit to Dr. Skinner and I felt like I was visiting, you know, the grand temple of psychology. And I went up to his office and, you know, he seemed, I'm like, "oh, you mean he's actually an ordinary person?" And we got to talking and of course back then I wore a dress you know ‘cause, you know, ladies had to be, like, dressed up, and I had a very conservative dress on, and B. F. Skinner touched my legs.”

“You've read about action at a distance, or quantum theory. I've always had the feeling that when I go to a meat plant I must be very careful, because God's watching. Quantum theory will get me.”

Page 282 of An Anthropologist On Mars By Oliver Sacks

“It's OK to be an eccentric; it's not OK to be a rude and dirty eccentric.”

Source: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/health/2014/07/18/temple-grandin-autism/12861843/

“No, I played around with vegetarianism back in the ‘70s. One thing, my physiology just got to have animal protein. I get hypoglycemic, I get all light-headed unless I eat animal protein.”

“They may ask why nature or God created such horrible conditions as autism, manic depression, and schizophrenia. However, if the genes that caused these conditions were eliminated there might be a terrible price to pay.”

NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman ISBN 978-0-399-18561-8, p. 428

“Mother prepared me to live in the world, but she didn't try to make me into a social being just so I could hang out with other teenagers at the lake, or have pajama parties with other girls. Her eyes were on a bigger prize - giving me the skills and nurturing the talents that would allow me to graduate from school, attend college, find a satisfying job and live independently.”

page 48 of The Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships By Temple Grandin, Sean Barron, Veronica Zysk

“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.”

Grandin, Temple. Thinking in Pictures : My Life with Autism (Expanded Edition).Westminster, MD, USA: Knopf Publishing Group, 2006.

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