Top 150 Temple Grandin Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I am different, not less.”

— Temple Grandin

Featured in: Self-Esteem Quotes, Acceptance Quotes, Helping Quotes, Different Quotes, Individuality Quotes

2. “The world needs different kinds of minds to work together.”

— Temple Grandin

Featured in: Mind Quotes, Collaboration Quotes, Different Quotes, Diversity Quotes

3. “Nature is cruel but we don’t have to be.”

— Temple Grandin

Featured in: Compassion Quotes

4. “Engineering is easy – it’s the people problems that are hard.”

— Temple Grandin

5. “There needs to be a lot more emphasis on what a child CAN do, instead of what he cannot do.”

— Temple Grandin

6. “In special education, there’s too much emphasis placed on the deficit and not enough on the strength.”

— Temple Grandin

7. “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.”

— Temple Grandin

8. “I’m a visual thinker, not a language-based thinker. My brain is like Google Images.”

— Temple Grandin

Featured in: Quotes About the Brain

9. “When I was younger I was looking for this magic meaning of life. It’s very simple now. Making the lives of others better, doing something of lasting value. That’s the meaning of life, it’s that simple.”

— Temple Grandin

Featured in: Meaning of Life Quotes

10. “Autism is part of who I am.”

— Temple Grandin

11. “Animals make us Human.”

— Temple Grandin

12. “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

13. “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

14. “My mind works like Google for images. You put in a key word; it brings up pictures.”

— Temple Grandin

15. “I am a big believer in early intervention.”

— Temple Grandin

16. “Curiosity is the other side of caution.”

— Temple Grandin

17. “My Advice is: You always have to keep persevering.”

— Temple Grandin

18. “People talk about curing autism. But if you got rid of all those traits, who’s going to make the next computer?”

— Temple Grandin

19. “I cannot emphasize enough the importance of a good teacher.”

— Temple Grandin

20. “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

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

— Temple Grandin

22. “People are always looking for the single magic bullet that will totally change everything. There is no single magic bullet.”

— Temple Grandin

23. “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

24. “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

25. “It is never too late to expand the mind of a person on the autism spectrum.”

— Temple Grandin

26. “The most important thing people did for me was to expose me to new things.”

— Temple Grandin

27. “The world needs all types of minds.”

— Temple Grandin

28. “Half of Silicon Valley’s got a little bit of autism.”

— Temple Grandin

29. “When you’re a weird geek, the way to sell yourself is to show your skills.”

— Temple Grandin

30. “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

31. “Sometimes you have to go outside your field of study to find the right people.”

— Temple Grandin

32. “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

33. “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

34. “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...”

— Temple Grandin

35. “For me and other people on the autism spectrum, sensory experiences that have little or no effect on neurotypical people can be severe life stressors for us. Loud noises hurt my ears like a dentist’s drill hitting a nerve. For.”

— Temple Grandin

36. “Pressure is calming to the nervous system.”

— Temple Grandin

37. “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.”

— Temple Grandin

38. “What do I do when I go home? Work. That’s basically my social life. I’m married to work.”

— Temple Grandin

39. “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.”

— Temple Grandin

40. “My life is basically my work.”

— Temple Grandin

41. “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.”

— Temple Grandin

42. “You can’t punish a child who is acting out because of sensory overload.”

— Temple Grandin

43. “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

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

— Temple Grandin

45. “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.”

— Temple Grandin

46. “When I was younger, I didn’t even realize the way I think visually is different.”

— Temple Grandin

47. “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

48. “People are getting too far away from the real-world. Politics is just ridiculous, it’s totally dysfunctional.”

— Temple Grandin

49. “I like to figure things out and solve problems.”

— Temple Grandin

50. “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.”

— Temple Grandin