It was both fascinating and appalling to learn that chimpanzees were capable of hostile and territorial behavior that was not unlike certain forms of primitive human warfare.

Empathy is really important.. Only when our clever brain and our human heart work together in harmony can we achieve our full potential.

We have to create more and more vegetarians, and help people to understand that it is not only the suffering of the animals (which is what made me vegetarian) but also the incredible harm to the environment, the tremendous amount of greenhouse gas created by the whole vast machinery of intensive animal farming.

My family has very strong women. My mother never laughed at my dream of Africa, even though everyone else did because we didn't have any money, because Africa was the 'dark continent', and because I was a girl.

Our brain is almost the same as the chimps', but we have language, we have electronic communications, we've put people on the moon - we are immensely more intelligent. And yet: how come the being with the most extraordinary intellect ever is destroying its only planet?

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 shouldn't have named the chimps. It wasn't scientific. I didn't know. I knew nothing. And worse sin of all was that I was ascribing to them emotions like happiness, sadness and so forth.