Jane Goodall Quotes

I think I'd like to be remembered as someone who really helped people to have a little humility and realize that we are part of the animal kingdom not separated from it.

Researchers find it very necessary to keep blinkers on. They don't want to admit that the animals they are working with have feelings.

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.

Other people have talked about chimpanzees being a window into the past, which I suppose is true, in a way.

The cheapest and most efficient way of slowing down global warming is to protect and restore the forests, particularly the tropical forests

The most important thing is to actually think about what you do. To become aware and actually think about the effect of what you do on the environment and on society. That's key, and that underlies everything else.

As human beings, we can encompass a vague feeling of what the universe is, and all in this funny little brain here - so there has to be something more than just brain, it has to be something to do with spirit as well.

To me, trees are living beings and they have their own sort of personalities.

Certainly, if you look at human behavior around the world, you have to admit that we can be very aggressive.

The best relationship you can have with a chimpanzee is total mutual trust.

It made me feel particularly sickened to know that this kind of callous attitude toward animals is repeated again and again in laboratories around this country.

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.

In what terms should we think of these beings, nonhuman yet possessing so very many human-like characteristics? How should we treat them? Surely we should treat them with the same consideration and kindness as we show to other humans; and as we recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes? Yes.

The more we spread the word, the further it will go and more it will change!

To reconnect with nature is key if we want to save the planet.

A good mother is protective but not over-protective. She's patient, she's affectionate, she's playful, but above all she is supportive.

I see that within each human being there are two extremes: there's the loving, the passionate, altruistic side that has evolved with us, and then there's the violent, brutal side that has evolved with us. The question for each individual is: which side is going to come out on top?

I believe that the tragedy [like terror attack] that's caused so much grief and suffering to so many thousands and thousands of people has also served as a call to action, because many people now are re-examining their own value systems, and the churches, temples, mosques and cathedrals are packed to overflowing for the first time in years.

Women tend to be more intuitive, or to admit to being intuitive, and maybe the hard science approach isn't so attractive. The way that science is taught is very cold. I would never have become a scientist if I had been taught like that.

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.

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.

I don't even think of chimps as animals. I think of them as beings.

I am obstinate and I will not give in.

We are beginning to learn that each animal has a life and a place and a role in this world. If we place compassion and care in the middle of all our dealings with the animal world and honor and respect their lives, our attitudes will change.

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

I thought my life was mapped out. Research, living in the forest, teaching and writing. But in '86 I went to a conference and realised the chimpanzees were disappearing. I had worldwide recognition and a gift of communication. I had to use them.

Words can enhance experience, but they can also take so much away. We see an insect and at once we abstract certain characteristics and classify it - a fly. And in that very cognitive exercise, part of the wonder is gone. Once we have labeled the things around us we do not bother to look at them so carefully. Words are part of our rational selves, and to abandon them for a while is to give freer reign to our intuitive selves.

Being evil is something that only humans are capable of.

Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutan shave been living for hundreds of thousands of years in their forest,living fantastic lives, never overpopulating, never destroying the forest. I would say that they have been in a way more successful than us as far as being in harmony with the environment.

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.

The tree I had in the garden as a child, my beech tree, I used to climb up there and spend hours. I took my homework up there, my books, I went up there if I was sad, and it just felt very good to be up there among the green leaves and the birds and the sky.

I want to change awareness.

I am living in the Africa I have always longed for, always felt stirring in my blood.

Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don't believe is right.

If you look into their [chimpanzees] eyes, you know you're looking into a thinking mind. They teach us that we are not the only beings with personalities, minds capable of rational thought, altruism and a sense of humor. That leads to new respect for other animals, respect for the environment and respect for all life.

A book came out recently written by scientists and environmentalists that made me so angry. It said the only thing we have to worry about is big industry. Each individual who tries to make his or her own environment better is useless. I find this criminal, because then you have a billion people all saying, It doesn't matter what I do because I'm just one person. But if you turn that around and a billion people say, What I do does make a difference, then it will make a difference.

The awful thing is we don't respect each other.

Chimps taught us we're not separated from the animal kingdom, we're a part of it.

It's easy to become hopeless. So people must have hope: the human brain, the resilience of nature, the energy of young people and the sort of inspiration that you see from so many hundreds of people who tackle tasks that are impossible and never give up and succeed.

One thing I had learned from watching chimpanzees with their infants is that having a child should be fun.

My mission is to create a world where we can live in harmony with nature. And can I do that alone? No. So there is a whole army of youth that can do it. So I suppose my mission is to reach as many of those young people as I can through my own efforts.

Thousands of people who say they "love" animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been utterly deprived of everything that could make their lives worth living and who endured the awful suffering and the terror of the abattoirs...

When I go back to Gombe it's to be in that timeless world where it's soft and where life is entwined and you actually see the pattern of nature. I always feel this great spiritual power which I believe is around.

Someday we shall look back on this dark era of agriculture and shake our heads. How could we have ever believed that it was a good idea to grow our food with poisons?

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

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.

There are many people out there (me being one of them) who can vouch that animals have feelings; they feel compassion and love, as well as pain!

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.