Autism Acceptance Quotes

“It's better to be open about who you really are, what you're really like, and be disliked by a few than it is to hide who you are and be tolerated by many.”
― Elle McNicoll, A Kind of Spark

“I'm surprised by her consideration. People don't normally think about how to make things less difficult for me.”
― Elle McNicoll, A Kind of Spark

“People who are not autistic tell themselves stories. They fill in the gaps of the people they meet, often with information that isn't correct. It's why they like horror so much. It's why they get so easily scared. They see a ghost and the ghost doesn't need to do a thing. They will complete the story, they will scare themselves.”
― Elle McNicoll, Keedie

“When you’re A child, grown-ups always tell you that ‘Stix and Stones Can break you’re bones, but words will never hurt you.’ They say it as if it’s a kind of spell that’s going to protect you. I’ve never seen the logic of it. Cuts and bruises quickly heal and disappear. You forget all about them. The psychological ones that people inflict with words go much deeper. Even now, I don’t like to think about those times too much, in case the scars begin to open up and hurt, making me feel useless all over again.”
― Susan Boyle, The Woman I Was Born to Be: My Story

“I may be experiencing struggles, doing more sacrifice, and adjusting to the needs of Bunso like other moms who have kids with special needs. At the end of the day, I know that there is a reason why God has given me
Bunso. Perhaps He knows that I can love him unconditionally. Yes, I can and I do truly. I am so glad that he loves me too beyond words can express.”
― Sharon Joyce S. Valdez, I Love You Because I Love You

“I am autistic. It is who I am. Saying I’m a person with autism is like saying you’re a person with gay”
― Haven by Timi Waters

“I am autistic. It is who I am. Saying I’m a person with autism is like saying you’re a person with gay.”
― Haven, Timi Waters

“I know, Matt. How are you feeling? One to ten. Ten totally freaked out. One pretty cool.'
'Hmmm. I’m an eight teetering on nine.”
― Dave Angel, An Obsession With Justice

“Kevin Stassu, the parent of an autistic son and the Director of the First Center for Autism and Innovation at Vanderbilt University, said something once that has struck with me: ‘I would not change my son for the world, so I will change the world for my son.”
― Eric Garcia

“Because if someone had told me when I was younger that it was OK to not be like everybody else, that it was not my job to try to be "normal" and to "fit in," that my way of seeing the world was just as valid and important as everybody else's, then I think I would have found growing up a lot easier.”
― Abigail Balfe, A Different Sort of Normal: The award-winning true story about growing up autistic

“People don't suffer from Asperger's. They suffer because they're depressed from being beat up and left out all the time”
― Justin Mulvaney

“– but what exactly do we mean by happiness? Is happiness a short-term state (‘I’m happy when I’m playing tennis’) or a longer-term condition (‘I’m a happy person’)? The very thing that makes one person extremely happy (going to a football match, reading a book, being alone...) might indeed induce a state of extreme unhappiness in another. But happiness, however defined, is something generally considered a positive state worth cultivating.”
― Victoria Honeybourne, A Practical Guide to Happiness in Adults on the Autism Spectrum

“-success does not bring long-term happiness, but that being happy can increase the likelihood of success.”
― Victoria Honeybourne, A Practical Guide to Happiness in Adults on the Autism Spectrum

“It is not emotions themselves that can be negative, but more our response to them.”
― Victoria Honeybourne, A Practical Guide to Happiness in Adults on the Autism Spectrum

“The autism employment efforts of recent years have tapped into an enormous wellspring of energy and desire to work among adults with autism, family members, and advocates. The post pandemic efforts will similarly need this participation.”
― Michael Bernick, The Autism Full Employment Act: The Next Stage of Jobs for Adults with Autism, ADHD, and Other Learning and Mental Health Differences

“To unmask is to lay bare a proud face of noncompliance, to refuse to be silenced, to stop being compartmentalized and hidden away, and to stand powerfully in our wholeness alongside other disabled and marginalized folks. Together we can stand strong and free, shielded by the powerful, radical acceptance that comes only when we know who we are, and with the recognition that we never had anything to hide.”
― Devon Price PhD, Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity

“Actually, the more I think about it, the more I figure that a lot of the cons of autism are not really caused by autism, but by how other people react to it.”
― Libby Scott, Can You See Me?

“I'm on the spectrum," I say with a jolt. "Derek and Jack were right."
"They were not." Artemis scowls. "That's a euphemism. They don't want to say autistic because they think it's rude. It is not rude."
"It's not?" I say distantly, observing my brain shift again.
"Nope. People think autism is some kind of error, and it's not. You're not broken or 'disordered,' or whatever they say on their little bits of paper. That just means 'not exactly like me.' Which--" Artemis points at the folder "--I think you'll see is one of the many things Mum wrote in the margins, along with the words go to hell, highlighted in pink. Autism is just a different wiring. You're built in alternative neurological software, from the ground up. Every single part of you. And it's..."
"Colorful and loud?" I guess, and Artemis laughs.
"I was going to say brilliant," she says. "But, yeah, I'd imagine that too. Although I don't know why anyone is surprised at how the world treats you. This has never really been a planet that embraces difference.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“Sonnet on The Spectrum
(Diary of An Autistic Neuroscientist)

We, on the spectrum, are often
misconstrued as rude or audacious.
Problem is not that we feel too little,
but that we feel too crippling much.

Sensory overload is our biggest struggle,
an eternal battle against daily situations.
Storms that the normals experience only in
tragedy, are our life's everyday occurrence.

Sidelining the stormy torment of the spectrum,
the world romanticizes with autistic savants.
I never could communicate with my parents,
and they never knew what my struggle was.

We autistics have difficulty communicating,
till we speak on a matter of interest.
Then we can jabber like any neurotypical,
bursting with joy in our nerves and veins.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Humanitarian Dictator

“We, on the spectrum, are often
misconstrued as rude or audacious.
Problem is not that we feel too little,
but that we feel too crippling much.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Humanitarian Dictator

“Sensory overload is our biggest struggle.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Humanitarian Dictator

“We, on the spectrum, are often
misconstrued as rude or audacious.
Problem is not that we feel too little,
but that we feel too crippling much.

Sensory overload is our biggest struggle,
an eternal battle against daily situations.
Storms that the normals experience only in
tragedy, are our life’s everyday occurrence.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Humanitarian Dictator

“The reason we aren't much good at people skills is that we think too much about what sort of impression we're making on the other person, or how we should be responding to this or that. But nature is always there at hand to wrap us up, gently : glowing, swaying, bubbling, rustling.”
― Naoki Higashida, The Reason I Jump By Naoki Higashida & NeuroTribes By Steve Silberman 2 Books Collection Set

“Your child is neurodivergent. Nothing will ever change that (no, nothing). So, stop Googling it, stop asking your Facebook groups' opinions, stop trying fad diets and yoga stretches. What you can change is the way you perceive disability. These are the cards that you and your child have been dealt, so play them.”
― Chloé Hayden, Different, Not Less: A Neurodivergent's Guide to Embracing Your True Self and Finding Your Happily Ever After

“Show them compassion, show them love, show them understanding. Protect them from the evils of the world, but don't hide them from it. Teach them to love and to be loved. Teach them to value and be valued. Teach them all that they are. Remind yourself and them that who they are is exactly who they're supposed to be.

It's not the child who needs to change, it's the world.”
― Chloé Hayden, Different, Not Less: A Neurodivergent's Guide to Embracing Your True Self and Finding Your Happily Ever After

“Daily, I get messages that invalidate me as a human because I'm autistic, with people asking me why I would ever be proud of something like that. Daily, I see, hear and experience people try to diminish my identity, and refuse to acknowledge the identity of their children, their patients, their students. When I look at the world around me, I'm reminded by the media, by politicians, by the very essence of our culture that my mind is wrong, that I'm not needed, that neurodivergence as a whole is indisputably delinquent, and that our identities are not considered important or whole.”
― Chloé Hayden, Different, Not Less: A Neurodivergent's Guide to Embracing Your True Self and Finding Your Happily Ever After

“After receiving a diagnosis, the minimal resources that we may be linked to (if we're lucky) are for the benefit of parents, carers and those who are third-party viewers, rather than for neurodivergent people. We're given books that have been created by doctors and psychologists and neurologists who may have studied our brains for a number of years and can spit out information until the cows come home. But, assuming they are neurotypical, they have never and will never experience or understand what it feels like to have our minds. We're given clinical books and clinical videos, and are taught as soon as the new label is attached to us that it's a cold, medical, distant thing, like our brains are no longer ours.

And, when we try to rid ourselves of these views and do our own research in an attempt to find things that feel closer to home and less analytical and impersonal, we are led to articles, sob stories, and posts that highlight the disappointment, fear and sorrow that surround all aspects of us, making us feel further invalidated, segregated and alienated.”
― Chloé Hayden, Different, Not Less: A Neurodivergent's Guide to Embracing Your True Self and Finding Your Happily Ever After

“What I learned is that it does not matter what you do, or where you go, schools are all organised around the same basic system. It's a system that will never work for a neurodivergent person, no matter how hard they try, because it's entire foundation is built against us.”
― Chloé Hayden, Different, Not Less: A Neurodivergent's Guide to Embracing Your True Self and Finding Your Happily Ever After

“Our society has taught us that if we act in a way that is different to the social norm, we are considered low functioning, stupid, dumb, childish, loony. And the thing is, perhaps those fears are valid. No one wants to see their child ridiculed. But why are we then determined to change the child, rather than the world around them? Why do we validate the wrong just because it's normalised, and ostracise the right just because it's not?”
― Chloé Hayden, Different, Not Less: A Neurodivergent's Guide to Embracing Your True Self and Finding Your Happily Ever After

“Taking away a child's stims doesn't take away their need to self-regulate; instead, it forces them into new habits that can cause long-term side effects and harm, including severe anxiety disorder, depression and emotional dysregulation. In 50 per cent of cases where therapy is used to stop an autistic child from stimming, the child has come out with symptoms that meet the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder.”
― Chloé Hayden, Different, Not Less: A Neurodivergent's Guide to Embracing Your True Self and Finding Your Happily Ever After