Gorillas are almost altruistic in nature. There's very little if any 'me-itis.' When I get back to civilization I'm always appalled by 'me, me, me.'

Active conservation [of gorillas] involves simply going out into the forest, on foot, day after day after day, attempting to capture poachers, killing-regretfully-poacher dogs, which spread rabies within the park, and cutting down traps.

One of the basic steps in saving a threatened species is to learn more about it: its diet, its mating and reproductive processes, its range patterns, its social behavior.

None of the three great apes is considered ancestral to modern man, Homo sapiens, but they remain the only other type of extant primate with which human beings share such close physical characteristics. From them we may learn much concerning the behavior of our earliest primate prototypes, because behavior, unlike bones, teeth, or tools, does not fossilize.

[About gorillas] You take these fine, regal animals. How many (human) fathers have the same sense of paternity? How many human mothers are more caring? The family structure is unbelievably strong.

When you realize the value of all life, you dwell less on what is past and concentrate more on the preservation of the future.

I had a wonderful contact, especially with Uncle Bert who was an angel and led the whole group over to my side of a steep ravine I could not cross to get over to them