Temple Grandin: Making

Temple Grandin is USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist. Explore interesting quotes on making.

Temple Grandin: 60 quotes15 likes

“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 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.”

“Animals make us Human.”

“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

“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

“(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.”

“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