Quotes by Jane Goodall

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.

You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.

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

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?

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.

Every single day, we could be in a motorcar accident, so, we have to carry on with our lives, and not imagine terror around every corner.

The chimps' way of aggression is quick and brutal. I compare them to gang attacks.

Any little thing that brings us back into communion with the natural world and the spiritual power that permeates all life will help us to move a little further along the path of human moral and spiritual evolution.

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.

Animals are as deserving of a place on this planet as we are, and the difference between us is that humans have a voice they can use to help the animal cause, and it is up to all of us to use it to make a positive difference!

Here we are, arguably the most intelligent being that's ever walked planet Earth, with this extraordinary brain ... and yet we're destroying the only home we have.

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.

If we do not do something to help these creatures, we make a mockery of the whole concept of justice.

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

If you work hard and be persistent, you will achieve whatever you want to do.

Realize that change -- whilst we want it to happen fast -- is usually the result of a great deal of work, and often comes as a result of a series of compromises (so long as we do not compromise our values).

That's what keeps me going. Everywhere I go there are young people with shining eyes wanting to tell me, Dr. Jane, we're going to make the world a better place.

It would be absolutely useless for any of us to work to save wildlife without working to educate the next generation of conservationists.

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.

We have the choice to use the gift of our life to make the world a better place.

I sometimes wonder how some people can live with themselves in some of the big companies today. So many far-reaching decisions are based on how they will affect the next shareholders' meeting.

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.

Every stage of my life set the scene for the next, and at each point all I had to do was say yes and not think too much about the consequences.

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

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

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

If we could just stop building up armies and things like that, we would have all the money we need for wildlife and poverty.

If we allow the destruction of the environment, we can see the terrorists have utterly won, and are destroying the future of our children and grandchildren. We must not let that happen.

We are unique. Chimpanzees are unique. Dogs are unique. But we humans are just not as different as we used to think.

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

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.

You may not believe in evolution, and that is all right. How we humans came to be the way we are is far less important than how we should act now to get out of the mess we have made for ourselves.

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.

One cannot watch chimpanzee infants for long without realizing that they have the same emotional need for affection and reassurance as human children.

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?

I've always felt you don't have to be completely detached, emotionally uninvolved to make precise observations. There's nothing wrong with feeling great empathy for your subjects.

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.

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

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.

My hope for the future is that we learn wisdom again.

I've learned that if you want people to join in any kind of conservation effort, you have to help them to care with their hearts, not just their heads.

One individual cannot possible make a difference, alone. It is individual efforts, collectively, that makes a noticeable difference -- all the difference in the world!

I never wanted to give up. I thought I might have to. Especially at the beginning when chimpanzees had never seen a white person before.They gave one look at me and ran away! They were scared, but eventually I got their trust.

Animals were my passion from even before I could speak apparently. When I was about 10, 11 I fell in love with Tarzan.

I had never been able to believe that God would give us poor frail humans only one chance at making it -- that we would be assigned to some kind of hell because we failed during one experience of mortal life. ... So the concepts of karma and reincarnation made logical sense to me.

The greatest danger to our future is apathy.

It's not a pretty picture, but there are reasons for hope.

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

Cumulatively small decisions, choices, actions, make a very big difference.

The least I can do is speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves.

If only we can overcome cruelty, to human and animal, with love and compassion we shall stand at the threshold of a new era in human moral and spiritual evolution -- and realize, at last, our most unique quality: humanity.

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.

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.

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

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?

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 had a wonderful teacher about animal behavior.

I was the sort of person who didn't care about hairdressing and clothes and parties and boyfriends. I really wanted to be in the wild.

The hardest part of returning to a truly healthy environment may be changing the current totally unsustainable heavy-meat-eating culture of increasing numbers of people around the world. But we must try. We must make a start, one by one.

I don't care two hoots about civilization. I want to wander in the wild.

We seem to have lost the wisdom of the indigenous people, which dictated that in any major decision, the first consideration was 'How will this decision we're making today affect our people in the future? These days, decisions are made based on the bottom line.

To me, cruelty is the worst of human sins. Once we accept that a living creature has feelings and suffers pain, then by knowingly and deliberately inflicting suffering on that creature, we are guilty, whether it be human or animal.

Each one of us matters, has a role to play, and makes a difference. Each one of us must take responsibility for our own lives, and above all, show respect and love for living things around us, especially each other.

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

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

I've got different ideas of complete happiness. But one is being by myself out in a forest, completely happy. Another is walking with a dog in some nice place. And three is sitting around preferably a fire, but not necessarily, and drinking red wine with friends and telling stories.

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.

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

Science demands objective factual evidence -- proof; spiritual experience is subjective and leads to faith.

I wouldn't even like to begin to define God -- I have absolutely no idea. But what I feel, and what touches me, is a great spiritual power, which I don't even want to name. If I had to, I would say God, because I don't know any other.

I don't have any idea of who or what God is. But I do believe in some great spiritual power. I feel it particularly when I'm out in nature. It's just something that's bigger and stronger than what I am or what anybody is. I feel it. And it's enough for me.

We, as humans, have actually developed a sense of social responsibility. We have gone beyond our basic instincts.

Primates are very territorial. It is in their nature to protect their food resources as well as their females and young.

It's not Africa that is destroying the African rainforest, it's selling concessions to timber companies that are not African, they are from the developed world -- Japan, America, Germany, Britain.

Most Africans don't get to see these wild animals at all. Once they see and learn about them, they are much more likely to become involved in protecting the environment.

When I was two, a dragonfly flew near me. A man knocked it to the ground and trod on it. I remember crying because I'd caused the dragonfly to be killed.

Whales, like elephants, are so social and intelligent. This hurts me to think of them being transported, put in noisy airplanes, and brought to a horrible concrete pen when they're supposed to be out in the sea.

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

Well, in some ways we're not successful at all. We're destroying our home. That's not a bit successful.

Never be arrogant or abrasive. Treat your opponent respectfully if they really and truly believe they are right.

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.

I was even accused of teaching the chimps how to fish for termites which I mean that would have been such a brilliant coup.

The voice of the natural world would be, Could you please give us space and leave us alone to get along with our own lives and our own ways, because we actually know much better how to do it then when you start interfering.

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.

What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.

If you really want something, and really work hard, and take advantage of opportunities, and never give up, you will find a way.. Follow your Dreams.

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

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

But does that mean that war and violence are inevitable? I would argue not because we have also evolved this amazingly sophisticated intellect, and we are capable of controlling our innate behavior a lot of the time.

War had always seemed to me to be a purely human behavior. Accounts of warlike behavior date back to the very first written records of human history; it seemed to be an almost universal characteristic of human groups.

I'm highly political. I spend an awful lot of time in the U.S. trying to influence decision-makers. But I don't feel in tune with British politics.

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.

As a small child in England, I had this dream of going to Africa. We didn't have any money and I was a girl, so everyone except my mother laughed at it. When I left school, there was no money for me to go to university, so I went to secretarial college and got a job.

I would never say I was an icon, but so many people have said I am, so I suppose I am. I mean, I can't not be what everyone says I am. But I don't feel like an icon.

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.

I never wanted to be a scientist per se. I wanted to be a naturalist.

People say maybe we have a soul and chimpanzees don't. I feel that it's quite possible that if we have souls, chimpanzees have souls as well.

I'm always pushing for human responsibility. Given that chimpanzees and many other animals are sentient and sapient, then we should treat them with respect.

Whatever we believe about how we got to be the extraordinary creatures we are today is far less important than bringing our intellect to bear on how do we get together now around the world and get out of the mess that we've made. That's the key thing now. Never mind how we got to be who we are.

I like some animals more than some people, some people more than some animals.

I was born in London in England in 1934. I went through, as a child, the horrors of World War II, through a time when food was rationed and we learned to be very careful, and we never had more to eat than what we needed to eat. There was no waste. Everything was used.

Chimps can do all sorts of things we thought that only we could do -- like tool-making and abstraction and generalisation. They can learn a language -- sign language -- and they can use the signs. But when you think of our intellects, even the brightest chimp looks like a very small child.

There are certain characteristics that define a good chimp mother. She is patient, she is protective but she is not over-protective -- that is really important. She is tolerant, but she can impose discipline. She is affectionate. She plays. And the most important of all: she is supportive.

I got my love of animals from the Dr. Doolittle books and my love of Africa from the Tarzan novels. I remember my mum taking me to the first Tarzan film, which starred Johnny Weissmuller, and bursting into tears. It wasn't what I had imagined at all.

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

When you meet chimps you meet individual personalities. When a baby chimp looks at you it's just like a human baby. We have a responsibility to them.

Words can be said in bitterness and anger, and often there seems to be an element of truth in the nastiness. And words don't go away, they just echo around.

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.

We have language and they do not. Chimps communicate by embracing, patting, looking -- all these things. And they have lots of sounds. But they cannot sit and discuss. They cannot teach about things that are not present, as far as we know.

My mother always used to say, 'Well, if you had been born a little girl growing up in Egypt, you would go to church or go to worship Allah, but surely if those people are worshipping a God, it must be the same God' -- that's what she always said. The same God with different names.

Chimps are very quick to have a sudden fight or aggressive episode, but they're equally as good at reconciliation.

From my perspective, I absolutely believe in a greater spiritual power, far greater than I am, from which I have derived strength in moments of sadness or fear. That's what I believe, and it was very, very strong in the forest.