Quotessence
Home / Topics / Autism Quotes

Autism Quotes

Browse 658 quotes about Autism.

Related topics

PeopleChildrenIfsThinkingKidsAutisticKnowsAspergersSpectrumWayPersonsVaccinesNeedsParentChildren With AutismDifferentBehaviorDisabilityWorldCausesDisorderInspiringDoeKindStillsSyndromesWantBelieveAreasAsperger's SyndromeHumansResearchScientistShouldSocialSonSpeakTwoWellsAnimalCommunityConditionsMightNormalProblemRealSpecialTogetherTraitsTreatmentVaccinationsYears

Autism Quotes

“The form of unique intelligence is one of the reasons some people think that animals don't think. Because they can't express joy or fear, animals must not be able to feel them. They think in sounds, places, smells, memory association kind of like temple (a girl with autism) does. Except that temple learned to express herself with words. She can serve as a link between big business and activists. The link between both worlds”

ScienceLanguageAnimalsAutism
Book:Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World
Create image

“To understand the autistic brain is to enter a world shaped by depth, precision, and sensitivity.”

ScienceUnderstandingCompassionIdentityPerspectiveEmpowermentAuthenticityAutismNeurodiversityStrengths Based
Book:The Therapist's Handbook for Neurodivergent People: A NeuroFlex ACT Guide for Living Fully with ADHD, Autism, OCD, and a Neurodivergent Life
Create image

“In a landmark study into the psychology of perceived “creepiness,” psychologists McAndrew and Koehnke (2016) asked 1,341 respondents to answer questions about which personal qualities and behaviors they associated with “creepy” people, and used statistical factor analysis to develop a measurable “creepiness” factor. The creepiness factor they developed included the following traits: a person having awkward, unpredictable behavior, an unnatural-looking smile, laughter that occurred at “unnatural” times, speaking for too long about a single topic, and not knowing when to end a conversation.[30] When Autistic people attempt to socialize and bond with others in an affable, enthusiastic way, these are often the very traits we embody. Even as we try to put the neurotypical people around us at ease by smiling, keeping the conversation moving, and staying present, we might be seen as scary or unsettling. A series of experiments by social psychologists Leander, Chartrand, and Bargh (2012) found that when a person engages in social mirroring in an even slightly inappropriate way, it skeeves people out, and even makes them feel physically colder.[31] A little bit of mimicry is normal among friends. People mirror one another’s postures and mannerisms as they get comfortable and fall “ into sync. But if you mirror someone too much, or at the wrong time, these studies show you can literally give other people the chills. Autistic maskers try really hard to mirror other people, but since we can’t do it as fluently and effortlessly as neurotypicals do, we often unwittingly set off NT’s creep-dars. The solution, then, is to stop hiding and pretending to be something we’re not. Instead of straining (and failing) to imitate NT people, we can become radically visible. Sasson’s research found that when participants were told they were interacting with an Autistic person, their biases against us disappeared. Suddenly they liked their slightly awkward conversation partner, and expressed interest in getting to know them. Having an explanation for the Autistic person’s oddness helped the creeped-out feeling go away. Follow-up research by Sasson and Morrison (2019) confirmed that when neurotypical people know that they’re meeting an Autistic person, first impressions of them are far more positive, and after the interaction neurotypicals express more interest in learning about Autism.[32] 30. McAndrew, F. T., & Koehnke, S. S. (2016). On the nature of creepiness. New Ideas in Psychology, 43, 10–15. 31. Leander, N. P., Chartrand, T. L., & Bargh, J. A. (2012). You give me the chills: Embodied reactions to inappropriate amounts of behavioral mimicry. Psychological Science, 23(7), 772–779. Note: many of John Bargh’s priming studies have failed replication attempts in recent years. For a discussion of a failed attempt of a related but different series of temperature priming studies, see Lynott, D., Corker, K. S., Wortman, J., Connell, L., Donnellan, M. B., Lucas, R. E., & O’Brien, K. (2014). Replication of “Experiencing physical warmth promotes interpersonal warmth” by Williams and Bargh (2008). Social Psychology. 32. Sasson, N. J., & Morrison, K. E. (2019). First impressions of adults with autism improve with diagnostic disclosure and increased autism knowledge of peers. Autism, 23(1), 50–59.”

SciencePsychologyAutismNeurodivergence
Book:Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity
Create image

“Neuroscientists have observed that Autistic brains continue to develop in areas associated with social skills for far longer than neurotypical brains are believed to. One study, conducted by Bastiaansen and colleagues (2011), observed that though young Autistic people experienced far less activity than allistics in the inferior frontal gyrus (an area of the frontal lobe involved in interpreting facial expressions), by age thirty no differences between non-Autistics and Autistic people were evident. In other words, Autistic brains eventually “caught up” to neurotypical brains, in terms of how actively they processed and interpreted facial expressions as social data. Other studies have found that Autistic people over the age of fifty are comparable to allistic people, in terms of their ability to make sense of the motivations and emotions of others. Researchers aren’t sure why these findings occur, only that they help to justify conceiving of Autism as a developmental disability or delay. For my part, I suspect that Autistic people get better at reading faces and understanding human behavior over time because we eventually develop our own systems and tricks for making sense of the world. We might have developed at the same pace as neurotypicals if we’d been given accessible tools earlier on. The social scripts and shortcuts that work for neurotypical people do not work for us, so we have to teach ourselves to develop social instincts.”

SciencePsychologyAutismNeurodiversity
Author:Devon Price
Create image

“I regret that my coauthors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article published in the journal Pediatrics. The omitted data suggested that African American males who received the MMR vaccine before age 36 months were at increased risk for autism. Decisions were made regarding which findings to report after the data were collected, and I believe that the final study protocol was not followed.”

BelieveMadeAgeI BelieveDecisionStudyRiskInformationRegretMonthsFindingsMalesFinalsSignificantDataAfrican AmericanReportsArticlesAutismJournalVaccinesI RegretProtocol
Author:William Thompson
Create image

“I have respect for mother nature's methods of robustness (billions of years allow most of what is fragile to break); classical thought is more robust (in its respect for the unknown, the epistemic humility) than the modern post-Enlightenment naïve pseudoscientific autism. Thus my classical values make me advocate the triplet of erudition, elegance, and courage; against modernity's phoniness, nerdiness and philistinism”

YearsMotherValuesBreakModernHumilityEnlightenmentMethodBillionsPostsFragileAutismEleganceModernityMother NatureRobustEruditionTripletNerdiness
Author:Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Create image

“Normal people have an incredible lack of empathy. They have good emotional empathy, but they don't have much empathy for the autistic kid who is screaming at the baseball game because he can't stand the sensory overload. Or the autistic kid having a meltdown in the school cafeteria because there's too much stimulation.”

PeopleChildrenKidsSchoolGamesToo MuchEmotionalNormalEmpathyBaseballMental HealthIncrediblesAutismSensoryAutisticStimulationBaseball GamesOverloadCafeteriaMeltdownsInformation OverloadLack Of EmpathyNo EmpathySchool Cafeteria
Author:Temple Grandin
Create image

“Autism is a neurological disorder. It's not caused by bad parenting. It's caused by, you know, abnormal development in the brain. The emotional circuits in the brain are abnormal. And there also are differences in the white matter, which is the brain's computer cables that hook up the different brain departments.”

KnowsDifferentMatterDifferencesWhiteBrainEmotionalDevelopmentComputerParentingDepartmentDisorderAutismHookCablesAbnormalCircuitsAutisticHook UpNormal And AbnormalBad ParentingNeurological Disorders
Author:Temple Grandin
Create image

“In America we've spent over a billion dollars on autism research. What have we got for that? We've not seen anything that's appreciably impacted the quality of life of autistic people, regardless of their place on the spectrum. Quite frankly, we've spent $1bn figuring out how to make mice autistic and we'll spend another $1bn figuring out how to make them not autistic. And that's not what the average person wakes up in the morning aspiring to. They think: am I going to be able to find a job, to communicate, to live independently, either on my own or with support? Those are the real priorities.”

PeopleThinkingPersonsRealAbleJobsAmericaMy OwnQualityMorningSupportResearchWake UpDollarsAverageCommunicateBillionsPrioritiesAutismMiceSpectrumQuality Of LifeAutisticAverage Person
Author:Ari Ne'eman
Create image

“The main problem, certainly, for the people who will not get vaccinated with Thimerosal, which was put into polio vaccine. And the belief was that it may cause autism. And there's been an awful lot done in terms of studies in Western Europe, Canada, the United States, and no correlation was found between Thimerosal and autism from those children who took vaccines. Indeed, when Thimerosal was taken out of many of these vaccines, the autism rate in the United States still rose.”

PeopleMayChildrenStillsStatesDoneProblemFoundBeliefCausesTermUnitedUnited StatesStudyTakenEuropeRoseWesternRateAwfulCanadaAutismVaccinesCorrelationPolioWestern EuropePolio Vaccine
Author:David Oshinsky
Create image

“So, obviously, autism - which is the key in this - is a very big problem. We need more studies about it. We certainly have to try to figure out what causes it and why and do something about it. But to tab it to vaccines, I think, is a real mistake. Not only is there no evidence, but what it leads to is larger numbers of unvaccinated children. And that's not only a problem for polio. It's a problem for a wide range of vaccine-preventable diseases.”

ThinkingNeedsTryingChildrenRealProblemBigsCausesNumbersMistakeStudyFiguresKeysDiseaseEvidenceWideRangeAutismVaccinesBig ProblemsPolio
Author:David Oshinsky
Create image