Temple Grandin Quotes

I studied a lot of animal behavior and one of the things I find really interesting is the whole idea that animals are sensory based thinkers and I wrote about this in my book, Animals in Translation. That an animal's memory is not in words, they've got to be in pictures - it's very detailed so let's say the animal gets afraid of something - they'll get afraid of something that they're looking at or hearing, the moment the bad thing happens.

There's animals like us existing and thinking and giving interviews on Australian television.

He began to search among the infinite series of impressions which time had laid down, leaf upon leaf, fold upon fold softly, incessantly upon his brain; among scents, sounds; voices, harsh, hollow, sweet; and lights passing, and brooms tapping; and the wash and hush of the sea.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd, I stand and look at them long and long.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained, I stand and look at them long and long.

Thinking in pictures is, therefore, only a very incomplete form of becoming conscious. In some way, too, it stands nearer to unconscious processes than does thinking in words, and it is unquestionably older than the latter both ontogenetically and phylogenetically.

Animals are good to think with.

I do ask myself sometimes, what am I doing writing about animals that talk like we do? But I guess it's okay if it brings across a point.

The only animal from which humans have nothing to learn, in fact, is the sheep. Humans have already learned everything the sheep's got to teach.

Why do people shush animals? Theyve never spoken

We're animals, I think we forget that. I think there is an ancient archetypal memory that still exists within us. If we deny that, what is the cost? So I do think it's what binds us as human beings.

[Referring to the birds:] Nat listened to the tearing sound of splintering wood, and wondered how many million years of memory were stored in those little brains, behind the stabbing beaks, the piercing eyes, now giving them this instinct to destroy mankind with all the deft precision of machines.

The animal has secrets which, unlike the secrets of caves, mountains, seas are specifically addressed to man.

Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.

To see is to think, and to think is to see.

...chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans are thinking, self-aware beings, capable of planning ahead, who form lasting social bonds with others and have a rich social and emotional life. The great apes are therefore an ideal case for showing the arbitrariness of the species boundary. If we think that all human beings, irrespective of age or mental capacity, have some basic rights, how can we deny that the great apes, who surpass some humans in their capacities, also have these rights?

Anytime you work with animals, you begin to see more humanity in them.

Memory works like the collection glass in the Camera obscura: it gathers everything together and therewith produces a far more beautiful picture than was present originally.

I don't even think of chimps as animals. I think of them as beings.

Animals make us Human.

How do you have a think in pictures? Well, you have to sort the pictures into categories. You know, for example, a dog knows that, you know, there's good people and there's bad people. And I talked to a lady the other day where her dog was afraid of people with white beards because she had adopted him from an animal shelter and somebody with a white beard had abused him. And this dog was now afraid of everybody that had a white beard. That was the bad category.

Why is there such a gap between nonspeaking animals and speaking man, when there is no other such gap in nature?

If everything is perfect, language is useless. This is true for animals. If animals don't speak, it's because everything's perfect for them. If one day they start to speak, it will be because the world has lost a certain sort of perfection.

It is quite possible that an animal has spoken to me and that I didn't catch the remark because I wasn't paying attention.

The animal man lives in the senses. If he does not get enough to eat, he is miserable; or if something happens to his body, he is miserable. In the senses both his misery and his happiness begin and end.