Jane Goodall Quotes

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.

Some people actually do not like animals - hard for me to understand, but true.

There would be very little point in my exhausting myself and other conservationists themselves in trying to protect animals and habitats if we weren't at the same time raising young people to be better stewards.

We have a responsibility toward the other life-forms of our planet whose continued existence is threatened by the thoughtless behavior of our own human species. . . . Environmental responsibility – for if there is no God, then, obviously, it is up to us to put things right.

A chimp would never plan to pull another's nails out.

Even chimps understand the concept - if a troop of chimps enters a fruit tree, they will only pick the fruits that are ripe and leave the others growing. That is sustainability.

A sense of calm came over me. More and more often I found myself thinking, "This is where I belong. This is what I came into this world to do.

there have been too many events in my life, and in the lives of my friends, which have defied any kind of scientific explanation. Science does not have appropriate tools for the dissection of the spirit.

I believe the only hope for mankind lies in the hands of our young people.

Above all we must realize that each of us makes a difference with our life. Each of us impacts the world around us every single day. We have a choice to use the gift of our life to make the world a better place - or not to bother

As thy days, so shall thy strength be.

The least I can do is speak out for the hundreds of chimpanzees who, right now, sit hunched, miserable and without hope, staring out with dead eyes from their metal prisons. They cannot speak for themselves.

But let us not forget that human love and compassion are equally deeply rooted in our primate heritage, and in this sphere too our sensibilities are of a higher order of magnitude than those of chimpanzees.

Chimps act the way they feel unless they are afraid of reprisal if they do so. But that doesn't apply to humans.

Only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, we will help. Only if we help, we shall be saved.

I believe that accurate knowledge is very, very important, but find that out in free time. Don't let it take over every hour of the day. Perhaps most important, talk about it.

Mainly because as women's education increases all around the planet, we find that family size tends to drop.

Successful actors and actresses have to get themselves into their roles before acting. Therefore, you need to really care about what you are saying.

When I began in 1960, individuality wasn't an accepted thing to look for; it was about species-specific behaviour. But animal behaviour is not hard science. There's room for intuition.

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.

I love to write - it is a great source of reflection, especially as I continue to meet many new inspiring people.

You cannot share your life with a dog, as I had done in Bournemouth, or a cat, and not know perfectly well that animals have personalities and minds and feelings.

I think anything is better than war. The extent to which one can negotiate with fanatics, I have no idea. I don't know.

I believe sharing stories and experiences is the best way to teach people to empathize!

Some people say, therefore, that violence and war are inevitable. I say rubbish: Our brains are fully capable of controlling instinctive behavior.

I urge you to read Eternal Treblinka and think deeply about its important message.

People say to me so often, 'Jane how can you be so peaceful when everywhere around you people want books signed, people are asking these questions and yet you seem peaceful,' and I always answer that it is the peace of the forest that I carry inside.

Even when it comes to things like wars over oil, which may seem like a whole different ball game, there are still comparisons one can draw: chimps fight for their territory; they fight for the resources within that territory, so it does relate in a way.

I started as - well, I wanted to be Poet Laureate. And I wanted to be a naturalist. That's how I began. I didn't have any desire to go and be a scientist. Louis Leakey channeled me there. I'm delighted he did. I love science. I love analyzing and making sense of all these observations. So, it was the perfect rounding off of who I was into who I am.

I think we must cling to the hope that we can see in the great heroism, the bravery of the firemen and policemen, and the outpouring of caring and concern that has come pouring in from around the world.

You have to realise that touching is a real violation of personal space.

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

If a chimp who has been abused horribly by humans can help a human friend in a time of need, how much more should we help the animals - and other people for that matter - in their time of need?

I learnt from Flo how to be mother. Flo was patient, tolerant. She was supportive. She was always there. She was playful. She enjoyed having her babies, as good mothers do.

Certainly the first true humans were unique by virtue of their large brains. It was because the human brain is so large when compared with that of a chimpanzee that paleontologists for years hunted for a half-ape, half-human skeleton that would provide a fossil link between the human and the ape.

Certainly it's very often true that women tend to be a bit quieter and more prepared to sit there and let the animal tell you things.

I think the most important thing is to keep active, and to hope that your mind stays active.

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

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.

I feel a desperation to make people see what we are doing to the environment, what a mess we are making of our world. At this point, the more people I reach, the more I accomplish. ... I miss Gombe and my wonderful years in the forest But if I were to go back to that, I wouldn't feel I was doing what I should be doing.

You aren't going to save the world on your own. But you might inspire a generation of kids to save it for all of us. You would be amazed at what inspired children can do.

Some humans are mathematicians-others aren't.

You have to really care about what you say. And if you don't, it will never come out quite right, unless you go into acting, in which case you have to act fast before you realize it is something which you do not believe in.

Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.

I wasn't trying to be a scientist. I only ever wanted to be a naturalist, like a David Attenborough.

Lasting change is a series of compromises.

The person who has the most influence on me is my mother. Think of life as a flight where we fly higher and higher. If I were a bird that needs feathers to fly higher, I would regard my mother as my strongest feather.

If we start with chimpanzees, they differ from us with the composition of the DNA by only just over one percent. So, as far as genetics go, we're almost identical. The composition of the blood, the immune system, the structure of the brain - almost identical.