Women Activists From The United States

"You used to call me your dreamer, And now I'm living out my dreams; Oh, how I wish you could see, Everything that's happening for me."

"I am aghast by the reaction of my latest post, it is completely amazing to me how defensive and in denial this country really is! You are not focused on the horrific tragedy I addressed but more angered that I am putting a BIG bright spotlight on the fact it was a 'WHITE AMERICAN MALE' terrorist that walked in & killed 26 people (including children) leaving 20 severely injured ! All of a sudden .... ' we are all equal ' 'human is human' 'skin color doesn't matter ' (NOW neither does gender) 'makes no difference if they were male or female' ...... BUT those things absolutely matter when ... someone completely legitimate is running for president (versus someone who isn't) , when a car runs over innocent people while professing their love to a GOD different from yours , it sure matters to the cops when they beat or even kill innocent people of color , it even matters at the airport/on an airplane or in immigration when folks are completely profiled & judged for their background . NOW it doesn't matter if someone is a man or woman?"

"My dreams have become nightmares & those nightmares , reality ... This isn't fair , this isn't right , this isn't just , this isn't human! This is a TERRORIST act by a WHITE AMERICAN MAN! I am heartbroken & embarrassed. Mortified by our country & its shitty system , lack of control/laws! This does NOT HAVE or NEED to happen! It's devastatingly disgusting! This is exactly why the lyrics of Bad Mood were so important for me to share on a major platform. I wanted to bring awareness to the fact that everyday we are waking up to more terrifyingly painful information that makes it nearly impossible to feel optimistic that things are going to change! They say it gets worst before it gets better in some cases & I wish on every star that this is the worst of it! I continue to be hopeful that enough is enough and the eyes of the ignorant will open and realize that (gun) VIOLENCE has to stop! This assholes Facebook profile photo was a fucking riffle ! "I don't know how much more it can take!" #FuckGuns #FuckViolence 🚫💔🚫💔 My love is with you TX!"

"The reason I kind of started this vegan lifestyle] was because I had a fish that was highly intelligent. When I would come through the door … this blowfish would go to the side and get excited … and he really knew who I was. He really got excited when I was home. … And one day … I went to a sushi restaurant with a few of my friends and they were serving blowfish, and I thought, "You know, this is an intelligent animal.""

"[On boyfriend Liam Hemsworth] I think we're both deeper than normal people. What they think and how they feel."

"I'm a Brad Pitt fan as an actor. I don't necessarily think he's good-looking. If I tell you guys who I think are cute, they're lame people. Like, I think Harry Connick Jr. is so cute. In 'Hope Floats' or 'P.S. I Love You,' isn't he the cutest? Yeah, he is. I think Gerard Butler is 'Oh, my God.'"

"I can mix and match a cute shirt with some skinny jeans under a leather jacket and it looks fun and unique."

"I'm so stoked! I never expected to get nominated, I can't believe I'm on the same list as Clint Eastwood, Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen and everyone else."

"That's what I want to do with my life. I would love to be a photographer, I want to come to London to study. I hear there are some great schools here so I would love to do that."

"Today, I honor the memory of those brave settlers of Oregon, and pay tribute, as well, to the native Americans already inhabiting this land before pioneers like my great-great-grandparents arrived here in the mid-1800’s. Such dreams those pioneers had for this territory. Some instinct drew them here, a fate a pulling, a desire for deep and lasting change in their lives. They embraced that change. They sought it out. Theirs was a quest for new horizons, for new beginnings. For a new homeland. They rode. They walked. They staved. They forge. And they died. But they kept their eyes westward. They gave us Oregon."

"Although it takes place in Gotham City and fundamentally it is a movie about Batman, Chris wanted us to play everything for truth. The actors he chose for this movie are into realism."

"I'm not the youngest person at the table anymore. I'm not the young precocious one. I feel like I'm engaging with people in a different way now. I am a woman. I'm treated with respect, as an equal."

"The truth is nobody finances tiny movies anymore. I mean there are so many movies I like that I hope will get their money together. It's a different world than it was when I first started making independent movies. Something is really wrong right now. I was a part of it and things are so different now. You can't make a movie for three million dollars with a kind of known actor. It's impossible. I think in general it has to do with the financial state of the country. It's tough for everybody in every business, but the independent movies have really suffered I think…they would never have made Secretary. They never would have financed Secretary with an unknown actress and James Spader. There's just no way."

"I feel it's OK if not everybody agrees with me or likes me. The weird thing was it turned into people thinking I said we deserved it. I didn't say that - but Americans do need to look at their behavior in the world. It's easy to say, "That was awful," and hard to ask, "Is there a way I can amend?""

"He hit it in the entire performance [in Batman]. It's so difficult to do that in a huge movie like this and much easier to do in the tiny movies. That's why those are always the people who win Academy Awards. Heath was [amazing]; it's so unusual, and it happens really rarely even for the best actors, that you just hit this stride in a role and you're totally free."

"When I first saw it the first time, when I first saw him I felt... I felt upset. He's so good in the movie. He's incredible in it. It's so difficult to talk about. It's not an easy thing to sum up. I think he's great. Being around someone, acting with someone like that, is really inspiring and fun. It's very difficult to talk about. This isn't really the place where you open your heart up."

"many aspects of our society are not set up to allow visual thinkers — which so many of us neurodivergent folks are — to thrive. In fact, many aspects of our society seem set up specifically so we will fail. Schools force students into a one-size-fits-all curriculum. The workplace relies too much on résumés and G.P.A.s to assess candidates’ worth. This must change not only because neurodivergent people, and all visual thinkers, deserve better but also because without a major shift in how we think about how we learn, American innovation will be stifled."

"I believe that the place where an animal dies is a sacred one. There is a need to bring ritual into the conventional slaughter plants and use as a means to shape people's behavior. It would help prevent people from becoming numbed, callous, or cruel. The ritual could be something very simple, such as a moment of silence. In addition to developing better designs and making equipment to insure the humane treatments of all animals, that would be my contribution. (p206)"

"Most people don't realize that the slaughter plant is much gentler than nature. Animals in the wild die from starvation, predators, or exposure. If I had a choice, I would rather go through a slaughter system than have my guts ripped out by coyotes or lions while I was still conscious. 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."

"The possibility that a void exists after death has motivated me to work hard so I can make a difference — so that my thoughts and ideas will not die. When I was working on my Ph.D., a coworker in our lab told me that the world's libraries contain our extra soma, or out-of-body genes. Ideas are passed on like genes, and I have a great urge to spread my ideas. I read an article in the newspaper about an official at the New York Public Library who said that the only place on earth where immortality is provided is in libraries. This is the collective memory of humanity. I put this on a sign and placed it over my desk. It helped me to persevere and get through my Ph.D. work. (p199)"

"Problems that autistic people have with eye contact and awkward gestures are not visible on the Internet, and typewritten messages avoid many of the social problems of face-to-face contact. The Internet may be the best thing yet for improving an autistic person's social life. (p100)"

"I've been doing autism talks for the last 20 years and there still are people out there that do not want to, they can't recognize that these sensory problems are real. That, for some of these kids when that fire alarm goes off, that really hurts the ears, it's a really real thing."

"I was lucky in the ‘60s to also be taking a class in Classical Ethology by a professor named Tom Evans, where I learned that operant conditioning does not explain all animal behavior. He explained how fixed action patterns and hardwired instinctual behavior works. And I remember going on a visit to Dr. Skinner and I felt like I was visiting, you know, the grand temple of psychology. And I went up to his office and, you know, he seemed, I'm like, "oh, you mean he's actually an ordinary person?" And we got to talking and of course back then I wore a dress you know ‘cause, you know, ladies had to be, like, dressed up, and I had a very conservative dress on, and B.F. Skinner touched my legs. And I said "You may look at them, but you may not touch them" and that ended that. And that is as he was showing me around the rat lab, I said "Dr. Skinner if we can just learn about the brain then we really would know some things". And Dr. Skinner says to me "We don't need to know anything about the brain, we have operant conditioning". And I just never really could accept that. You know, especially after taking Tom Evans' class at the same time."

"I played around with vegetarianism back in the ‘70s. One thing, my physiology just got to have animal protein. I get hypoglycemic, I get all light-headed unless I eat animal protein. And I did a lot of thinking about this and I've designed a lot of equipment for meat plants. The cattle would have never been born, you know, if we hadn't raised them. And I feel very strongly, we've got to give animals a good life. I've worked really hard improving slaughter plants and animal handling and transport. And people have said to me, "Why don't you work on improving conditions on pig farms?" And basically, to be effective on making real change out there on the ground, you can only work on so many things. You know, you get too distributed, you're not effective. And, you know, I've got my one area I work in and I want to educate people about autism and I also want to improve, you know, animal handling and transport and make a real change out in the field on the ground."

"if you see a child with autistic-like behaviors at age two and three, the worst thing you can do is just let them sit and watch TV all day. That's just the worst thing you can do. You need to have a teacher working with that child, working on teaching language, working on social interaction, working on getting them interested in different things, and keeping their brain connected to the world."

"I feel very strongly that if you got rid of all of the autistic genetics you're not going to have any scientists. There'd be no computer people. You'd lose a lot of artists and musicians. There'd be a horrible price to pay. It's like a little bit of the autistic trait can give some advantages. You get too much of the autistic trait then you get a very severe handicap where the person's going to remain non-verbal. It's a continuum from a severe handicap all the way up to something where it's a personality variant."

"the things that scare a prey/species animal like cattle are a whole lot of little visual details that people just don't tend to notice. And one of the big problems they used to have is the people just wanted to get out there and yell and scream and push and shove and you know more and more prods. Rather than remove the things that the cattle were afraid of."

"my mind works like Google for images. You put in a key word; it brings up pictures. See language for me narrates the pictures in my mind."

"All people want to feel their efforts matter, and individuals with ASD are no different. (p214)"

"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. (p57)"

"There is often too much emphasis in the world of autism on the deficits of these children and not enough emphasis on developing the special talents that many of them possess. (p35)"

"Autistic thinking is always detailed and specific. Teachers and parents need to help both children and adults with autism take all the little details they have in their head and put them into categories to form concepts and promote generalization. (p33)"

"The best thing a parent of a newly diagnosed child can do is to watch their child without preconceived notions and judgements and learn how the child functions, acts, and reacts to his or her world. (p2)"

"At first I thought engineering could make all the improvements happen, but later in my career I learned that good engineering and design must be coupled with good management. (p296)"

"Animals like novelty if they can choose to investigate it; they fear novelty if you shove it in their faces. (p287)"

"Bad things always happen when an animal is overselected for any single trait. Nature will give you a nasty surprise. (p217)"

"Breeders need to realize that they can't have everything. There's a saying in engineering: You can build things cheap, fast, or right, but not all three. You have to pick two. It's true with genetics too. (p200)"

"All animals and people have the same core emotion systems in the brain. (p5)"

"I believe that the best way to create good living conditions for any animal, whether it's a captive animal living in a zoo, a farm animal or a pet, is to base animal welfare programs on the core emotion systems in the brain. My theory is that the environment animals live in should activate their positive emotions as much as possible, and not activate their negative emotions any more than necessary. If we get the animal's emotions rights, we will have fewer problem behaviors. (p3)"

"(What do you like to read or watch for entertainment?) I like Arthur C. Clark and David Brinn. I loved the movies Avatar and Gravity. My favorite science fiction TV show was the original Star Trek. My favorite science fiction movies are 2001: A Space Odyssey and Avatar. For reading materials on the plane, I read The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Business Week, and many others. At home I read Science, Nature, Beef Magazine, National Hog Farmer, Feedstuff, New Scientist, and The New Yorker."

"I hate violent images in the movies. Since I think in pictures, it is difficult to get these images out of my memory. I do not want this bad stuff in my memory. Reading about violence does not upset me, it is seeing it. Cartoon violence and car crashes have no effect. The images I want to avoid are realistic depictions of torture and cruelty."

"One thing that worries me is seeing, for example, the guys at the Jet Propulsion Lab who are my age. They are eccentric geeks. What would happen to the younger version of these people today? Would they have a fun job where they're the navigator for the Mars rover or would they be playing video games in a basement somewhere?"

"the skill sets of visual thinkers are essential to finding real-world solutions to society’s many problems."

"Complementary skills are the key to successful teams."

"The true measure of an education isn't what grades a student gets today, but where they are 10 years later."

"I often get asked what I would do to improve both elementary and high school. The first step would be to put more of an emphasis on hands-on classes such as art, music, sewing, woodworking, cooking, theater, auto mechanics and welding."

"We hear a great deal about the need to fix the infrastructure in this country, but we are too focused on the things that need improving and updating rather than the people who will be able to do the work."

"The popularization of the term neurodivergence and society’s growing understanding about the different ways that brains work are unquestionably positive developments for many individuals like me."

"For many, it’s words, not pictures, that shape thought. That’s probably how our culture got to be so talky: Teachers lecture, religious leaders preach, politicians make speeches and we watch “talking heads” on TV. We call most of these people neurotypical — they develop along predictable lines and communicate, for the most part, verbally."

"The meaning of life is if something that you did made something better."