Top 100 Jane Goodall Quotes
#1. If we could just stop building up armies and things like that, we would have all the money we need for wildlife and poverty.
Jane Goodall
#2. 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.
Jane Goodall
#3. 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.
Jane Goodall
#4. Mainly because as women's education increases all around the planet, we find that family size tends to drop.
Jane Goodall
#5. If plants could be credited with reasoning powers, we would marvel at the imaginative ways they bribe or ensnare other creatures to carry out their wishes.
Jane Goodall
#6. We could change the world tomorrow if all the millions of people around the world acted the way they believe.
Jane Goodall
#7. 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.
Jane Goodall
#8. 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.
Jane Goodall
#9. 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.
Jane Goodall
#10. 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.
Jane Goodall
#11. We are unique. Chimpanzees are unique. Dogs are unique. But we humans are just not as different as we used to think.
Jane Goodall
#12. I like some animals more than some people, some people more than some animals.
Jane Goodall
#14. I urge you to read Eternal Treblinka and think deeply about its important message.
Jane Goodall
#15. 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.
Jane Goodall
#16. The chimpanzees taught me a lot about nonverbal communication. The big difference between them and us is that they don't have spoken language. Everything else is almost the same: Kissing, embracing, swaggering, shaking the fist.
Jane Goodall
#17. 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.
Jane Goodall
#18. 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.
Jane Goodall
#19. I miss the early days; I do. I was so lucky. I basically had it to myself, learning about these chimpanzees. Nobody knew anything about them. Discovering their different personalities, different life histories. I was lucky.
Jane Goodall
#20. 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.
Jane Goodall
#21. I think the most important thing to do is to be willing to listen, willing to care, and willing to admit mistakes and change your ways for the better!
Jane Goodall
#22. Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans have 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.
Jane Goodall
#23. Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.
Jane Goodall
#24. They used to ask: "How will this decision that we make today affect our people in the future?" Now we make decisions based on: "How does it affect me, now? How does it affect the next shareholders meeting, three months ahead? How does it affect my next political campaign?"
Jane Goodall
#25. 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.
Jane Goodall
#26. 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.
Jane Goodall
#27. My mission is to create a world where we can live in harmony with nature.
Jane Goodall
#28. 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.
Jane Goodall
#29. I don't think that faith, whatever you're being faithful about, really can be scientifically explained. And I don't want to explain this whole life business through truth, science. There's so much mystery. There's so much awe.
Jane Goodall
#30. Chimps are very quick to have a sudden fight or aggressive episode, but they're equally as good at reconciliation.
Jane Goodall
#31. Some people actually do not like animals - hard for me to understand, but true.
Jane Goodall
#32. Only when our clever brain and our human heart work together in harmony can we achieve our true potential.
Jane Goodall
#33. We have so far to go to realize our human potential for compassion, altruism, and love.
Jane Goodall
#34. 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.
Jane Goodall
#35. 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.
Jane Goodall
#36. I've watched a lot of people who became famous who completely change and I think it's because they tend to believe all the hype that's out there. I don't think there's that much hype about me.
Jane Goodall
#37. 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.
Jane Goodall
#38. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.
Jane Goodall
#39. He had instigated a detailed study of the limb bones and locomotor patterns of a number of modern antelopes; the functions of varying bone structures of their legs could then be ascertained. Then, from the structure of fossil antelope bones reconstructed their movements.
Jane Goodall
#40. 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.
Jane Goodall
#41. 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.
Jane Goodall
#42. 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.
Jane Goodall
#43. 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.
Jane Goodall
#44. Arguably, we are the most intellectual creatures that's ever walked on planet Earth. So how come, then, that this so intellectual creature is destroying its only home?
Jane Goodall
#45. 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.
Jane Goodall
#46. In 1975, when my students were kidnapped by rebels, I was accused of hiding instead of trying to save them, and of not giving enough money for their ransom. I wasn't believed.
Jane Goodall
#47. 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.
Jane Goodall
#48. I think anything is better than war. The extent to which one can negotiate with fanatics, I have no idea. I don't know.
Jane Goodall
#49. 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.
Jane Goodall
#50. 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.
Jane Goodall
#51. 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.
Jane Goodall
#52. 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.
Jane Goodall
#53. On the day-long follows that I used to do with mothers and their offspring - these chimp families that I knew so well - there was hardly a day when I didn't learn something new about them.
Jane Goodall
#54. 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.
Jane Goodall
#55. However much you know giraffes, to see one in the wild for the first time feels prehistoric.
Jane Goodall
#56. 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.
Jane Goodall
#57. 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.
Jane Goodall
#58. People don't believe that their actions really and truly are going to make a difference. But kids get it. They know. And they get all excited about the difference they're making.
Jane Goodall
#59. Chimpanzees have given me so much. The long hours spent with them in the forest have enriched my life beyond measure. What I have learned from them has shaped my understanding of human behavior, of our place in nature.
Jane Goodall
#60. Be assured that our individual actions, collectively, make a huge difference.
Jane Goodall
#61. There is a powerful force unleashed when young people resolve to make a change.
Jane Goodall
#62. People say, "Oh, we ought to fight for animal rights." We fought for human rights, but even if humans have rights, they can still be horribly abused and are every day. You don't have to go to some far off land, far away place; we have a lot of child abuse in our own society.
Jane Goodall
#63. Some people say, therefore, that violence and war are inevitable. I say rubbish: Our brains are fully capable of controlling instinctive behavior.
Jane Goodall
#64. 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.
Jane Goodall
#65. One thing I had learned from watching chimpanzees with their infants is that having a child should be fun.
Jane Goodall
#66. It's not a pretty picture, but there are reasons for hope.
Jane Goodall
#67. I have found that to love and be loved is the most empowering and exhilarating of all human emotions.
Jane Goodall
#68. I don't care two hoots about civilization. I want to wander in the wild.
Jane Goodall
#69. I never wanted to be a scientist per se. I wanted to be a naturalist.
Jane Goodall
#70. 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.
Jane Goodall
#71. I love dogs, not chimps. Some chimps are nice, and some are horrid. I don't actually think of them as animals any more than I think of us as animals, although both of us are.
Jane Goodall
#72. 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.
Jane Goodall
#73. Studying chimps, I came to the conclusion that being evil is something that only humans are capable of. A chimp would never plan to pull another's nails out. The chimps' way of aggression is quick and brutal. I compare them to gang attacks.
Jane Goodall
#74. 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.
Jane Goodall
#75. For those who have experienced the joy of being alone with nature there is really little need for me to say much more; for those who have not, no words of mine can ever describe the powerful, almost mystical knowledge of beauty and eternity that come, suddenly, and all unexpected.
Jane Goodall
#76. We have the choice to use the gift of our life to make the world a better place
or not to bother
Jane Goodall
#77. We still have a long way to go. But we are moving in the right direction. 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.
Jane Goodall
#78. I was even accused of teaching the chimps how to fish for termites which I mean that would have been such a brilliant coup.
Jane Goodall
#79. From the moment when, staring into the eyes of a chimpanzee, I saw a thinking, reasoning personality looking back.
Jane Goodall
#80. Without the support of local people, you might as well give up because you can make all the noise you like, you can demarcate a national park, but if the people outside want to go creeping into a forest you really can't stop them. They've got to get a benefit.
Jane Goodall
#81. 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.
Jane Goodall
#82. 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.
Jane Goodall
#83. You're thinking about putting scientists into small cages and doing research on them. I wish it could happen sometimes.
Jane Goodall
#84. We find animals doing things that we, in our arrogance, used to think was "just human".
Jane Goodall
#85. 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.
Jane Goodall
#86. 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.
Jane Goodall
#87. Cruelty is a terrible thing. I believe it is the worst human sin.
Jane Goodall
#88. Here was a chimpanzee using a tool... That was object modification-- the crude beginning of tool making.
Jane Goodall
#89. The chimpanzee study was - well, it's still going on, and I think it's taught us perhaps more than anything else to be a little humble; that we are, indeed, unique primates, we humans, but we're simply not as different from the rest of the animal kingdom as we used to think.
Jane Goodall
#90. 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.
Jane Goodall
#91. I did this book 'Harvest for Hope,' and I learned so much about food. And one thing I learned is that we have the guts not of a carnivore, but of an herbivore. Herbivore guts are very long because they have to get the last bit of nutrition out of leaves and things.
Jane Goodall
#92. I am living in the Africa I have always longed for, always felt stirring in my blood.
Jane Goodall
#94. You may not believe in evolution, and that's all right. How we humans came to be the way we are is far less important that how we should act now to get out of the mess we have made for ourselves.
Jane Goodall
#95. 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.
Jane Goodall
#96. As I'm traveling around, I meet many small children. And when I look at a small and think how we've harmed this beautiful planet since I was that age, I feel a kind of desperation, anger, shame. I don't know what I feel; I just don't know what the emotion is.
Jane Goodall
#97. 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.
Jane Goodall
#98. Some humans are mathematicians-others aren't.
Jane Goodall
#99. 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.
Jane Goodall
#100. 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.
Jane Goodall
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