One cannot watch chimpanzee infants for long without realizing that they have the same emotional need for affection and reassurance as human children.

I don't spend that much time being introspective, believe it or not. All I know is that I grew up not questioning God because that's how you are. God was there like the birds and the wind.

every individual can make a difference ... if we continue to leave decision making to the so-called decision makers, things will never change.

Just think of the trust that often exists in soldiers. Within their own unit, you could say they have to trust each other. A spirit of camaraderie builds up and, in the end, they will risk their lives for each other. They may even go so far as to dehumanise the other, enemy group - a mechanism you can also observe in chimps.

Cultural speciation had been crippling to human moral and spiritual growth. It had hindered freedom of thought, limited our thinking, imprisoned us in the cultures into which we had been born. . . . These cultural mind prisons. . . . Cultural speciation was clearly a barrier to world peace. So long as we continued to attach more importance to our own narrow group membership than to the ‘global village’ we would propagate prejudice and ignorance.

There are many animal-welfare groups that sometimes seem to forget that human beings are animals too, that we need to include them in our sphere of compassion.

I was even accused of teaching the chimps how to fish for termites which I mean that would have been such a brilliant coup.