Simon Baron-Cohen Quotes

1. “Empathy is a necessary step for truth and reconciliation.”

2. “If you have a child with autism, and he or she has good intelligence, with no delay in language learning maybe there is an advantage to autism as well? Maybe it gives them a better understanding of mathematics, or science? After all, the essence of science and the essence of autism is to notice patterns that others have not noticed.”

3. “Empathy is a skill like any other human skill - and if you get a chance to practice, you can get better at it.”

4. “Autism spectrum disorders are linked to other problems: Most of the people we see in our Asperger clinic for adults also suffer from clinical levels of depression.”

5. “Hundreds of studies of various cultures have proven that, on average, boys play more than girls with constructional toys like Lego and toy cars, and girls play more with dolls.”

6. “Maybe because I had a sister with a disability I was already sensitised to and fascinated by people who think or develop differently.”

7. “Brains come in different types and they're all normal.”

8. “What we want is that one day every workplace will be diverse - we already encourage that with gender and ethnicity, but the next frontier is neurodiversity and it will become ordinary. People won't think twice about it.”

9. “My theory is that the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy, and that the male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems.”

10. “Baby girls, as young as 12 months old, respond more empathically to the distress of other people, showing greater concern through more sad looks, sympathetic vocalisations and comforting. This echoes what you find in adulthood: more women report frequently sharing the emotional distress of their friends.”