You can't do everything. You can't do health and forestry and agriculture. You've got to focus and do one or the other.

Even in chimps there is true altruistic behaviour; behaviour that doesn't fit into the sociobiological model that says you either help a close relative and thereby your own genes, or you help somebody else now in return for their help in the future. When a very high-ranking male chimpanzee rescues a little orphan, saving his life, that kind of explanation doesn't work.

My mother always taught us that if people don't agree with you, the important thing is to listen to them. But if you've listened to them carefully and you still think that you're right, then you must have the courage of your convictions.

What makes us human, I think, is an ability to ask questions, a consequence of our sophisticated spoken language.

It's the bond between mother and child, which is really for us and for chimps and other primates, the root of all the expressions of social behavior.

I cannot remember a time when I did not want to go to Africa to study animals.

I always loved animals. And when I was ten, I decided I had to go to Africa and live with animals and write books about them.