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

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.

[My] excursions provided a unique opportunity for observing [the gorillas' behavior] in their natural habitat... Then, all too soon, the infants were demanded for their trip to the zoo. ... [H]appily the babies did not know they would never see their mountain home again

I have no friends. The more you learn about the dignity of the gorilla, the more you want to avoid people.

I feel more comfortable with gorillas than people. I can anticipate what a gorilla's going to do, and they're purely motivated.

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

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.