We find animals doing things that we, in our arrogance, used to think was "just human".

When I look back over my life it's almost as if there was a plan laid out for me - from the little girl who was so passionate about animals who longed to go to Africa and whose family couldn't afford to put her through college. Everyone laughed at my dreams. I was supposed to be a secretary in Bournemouth.

Chimpanzees, more than any other living creature, have helped us to understand that there is no sharp line between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom. It's a very blurry line, and it's getting more blurry all the time.

If you catch somebody doing something wrong, he will just cringe away and curl up. He will not listen anymore. Instead, he will think of how he can counterattack.

In a very unscientific statement, I feel that there's been a disconnect between this clever brain and the heart.

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 good mothers and bad ones, but most of them are somewhere in-between.