Top 100 Quotes About Jane Goodall
#1. On April 3, 2014, Jane Goodall turned 80. The iconic blond ponytail has gone gray, but the sparkle of intelligence, sly humor, and fierce dedication still shines from her hazel eyes.
David Quammen
#2. When you talk to young girls these days about their role modles, very few mention a chemist like Madame Curie or an astrophysicist and astronaut like Sally Ride, or a zoologist like Jane Goodall. Instead, they look to someone like Madonna ...
W. Ann Reynolds
#3. Growing up, it was difficult to find role models I could relate too. Mass media told me to emulate sexy singers or sexy actresses. Jane Goodall was the closest thing I found to a woman I wanted to be like.
Lynsey Dyer
#4. The phrase "singular incredible life" seems to me that it applies more appropriately to Jane Goodall or David Attenborough, people I regard with awe and who stand for great humanism and knowledge.
Merrill Markoe
#5. I thus concluded, with the same awe of Jane Goodall discovering the chimpanzees' nimble use of tools to extract termites, it really wasn't so much the tragic event itself, but others having knowledge of it that prevented recovery.
Marisha Pessl
#6. I was always interested in animals, but when I was little, animal behavior was still a new science. It was available to become a veterinarian, it was available to study biology, but not specifically animal behavior. In the '60s, Jane Goodall was the founder of this new science.
Isabella Rossellini
#7. God created animals. And they're loving; they're beautiful. I feel the way (anthropologist) Jane Goodall does or any of those naturalists. I don't find my interest in animals weird or strange at all.
Michael Jackson
#8. 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
#9. 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
#10. 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.
Jane Goodall
#11. 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
#12. 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.
Jane Goodall
#13. Farm animals feel pleasure and sadness, excitement and resentment, depression, fear, and pain. They are far more aware and intelligent than we ever imagined ... they are individuals in their own right.
Jane Goodall
#14. I have never had an animal that didn't have a personality, one differing from another.
Jane Goodall
#15. Every individual can make a difference ... if we continue to leave decision making to the so-called decision makers, things will never change.
Jane Goodall
#16. Without patience I could never have succeeded.
Jane Goodall
#17. If we do not do something to help these creatures, we make a mockery of the whole concept of justice.
Jane Goodall
#18. Mainly because as women's education increases all around the planet, we find that family size tends to drop.
Jane Goodall
#19. 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
#20. I like to envision the whole world as a jigsaw puzzle ... If you look at the whole picture, it is overwhelming and terrifying, but if you work on your little part of the jigsaw and know that people all over the world are working on their little bits, that's what will give you hope.
Jane Goodall
#21. 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.
Jane Goodall
#22. We could change the world tomorrow if all the millions of people around the world acted the way they believe.
Jane Goodall
#23. 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
#24. 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
#25. 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
#27. 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
#28. My hope for the future is that we learn wisdom again.
Jane Goodall
#29. We are unique. Chimpanzees are unique. Dogs are unique. But we humans are just not as different as we used to think.
Jane Goodall
#30. I like some animals more than some people, some people more than some animals.
Jane Goodall
#32. Certainly, if you look at human behavior around the world, you have to admit that we can be very aggressive.
Jane Goodall
#33. There isn't a sharp line dividing humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. All the time, we find animals doing things that, in our arrogance, we thought were just human.
Jane Goodall
#34. I urge you to read Eternal Treblinka and think deeply about its important message.
Jane Goodall
#35. 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.
Jane Goodall
#36. Chimps taught us we're not separated from the animal kingdom, we're a part of it.
Jane Goodall
#37. 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
#38. I got to Africa. I got the opportunity to go and learn, not about any animal, but chimpanzees. I was living in my dream world, the forest in Gombe National Park in Tanzania. It was Tanganyika when I began.
Jane Goodall
#39. 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.
Jane Goodall
#40. 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
#41. I wanted to talk to the animals like Dr. Dolittle.
Jane Goodall
#42. I get upset when so many people say there are all sorts of problems in Africa and India where they have these big families. They don't realize that 10 children in rural Tanzania will use less natural resources in a year than one middle class American child. People don't think like that.
Jane Goodall
#43. Only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, we will help. Only if we help, we shall be saved.
Jane Goodall
#44. 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
#45. 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.
Jane Goodall
#46. 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
#47. Cumulatively small decisions, choices, actions, make a very big difference.
Jane Goodall
#48. Trees are living beings. And they have their own personalities... There are the young, eager saplings, all striving with each other... If you put your cheek against one of those, you almost sense the sap rising and the energy.
Jane Goodall
#49. 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
#50. Well, in some ways we're not successful at all. We're destroying our home. That's not a bit successful.
Jane Goodall
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. 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?
Jane Goodall
#54. 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
#55. 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.
Jane Goodall
#56. 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.
Jane Goodall
#57. What makes us human, I think, is an ability to ask questions, a consequence of our sophisticated spoken language.
Jane Goodall
#58. Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.
Jane Goodall
#59. 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
#60. 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
#61. 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
#62. One individual cannot possible make a difference, alone. It is individual efforts, collectively, that makes a noticeable difference - all the difference in the world!
Jane Goodall
#63. I had been told from school onwards that the best definition of a human being was man the tool-maker - yet I had just watched a chimp tool-maker in action. I remember that day as vividly as if it was yesterday.
Jane Goodall
#64. My mission is to create a world where we can live in harmony with nature.
Jane Goodall
#65. 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
#66. 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
#67. Chimps are very quick to have a sudden fight or aggressive episode, but they're equally as good at reconciliation.
Jane Goodall
#68. That is our hope. Because if we all start listening and helping, then surely, together, we can make the world a better place for all living things. Can't we?
Jane Goodall
#69. Some people actually do not like animals - hard for me to understand, but true.
Jane Goodall
#70. 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.
Jane Goodall
#71. Only when our clever brain and our human heart work together in harmony can we achieve our true potential.
Jane Goodall
#72. Terrorism is usually fueled by poverty, and the fanatical faith of the terrorists who truly believe that the more people they kill who do not subscribe to their faith, the greater their reward in heaven.
Jane Goodall
#73. We have so far to go to realize our human potential for compassion, altruism, and love.
Jane Goodall
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. The only possible way to get somebody to change is to reach into their hearts.
Jane Goodall
#77. I am not deeply involved in Australian politics but I know there are prime ministers, governments around the world who are not acting responsibly in relation to climate change.
Jane Goodall
#78. Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don't believe is right.
Jane Goodall
#79. 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
#80. 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
#81. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.
Jane Goodall
#82. And always I have this feeling
which may not be true at all
that I am being used as a messenger.
Jane Goodall
#83. 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).
Jane Goodall
#84. 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
#85. The Soul of Money is an inspired and utterly fascinating book. It will change the way you think about money ... It is a book for everyone who would like to make the world a better place.
Jane Goodall
#86. The more we spread the word, the further it will go and more it will change!
Jane Goodall
#87. 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
#88. How can you stop yourself from yelling and shouting and accusing everyone of cruelty? The easy answer is that the aggressive approach simply doesn't work.
Jane Goodall
#89. 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
#90. Young people, when informed and empowered, when they realize that what they do truly makes a difference, can indeed change the world.
Jane Goodall
#91. I believe the only hope for mankind lies in the hands of our young people.
Jane Goodall
#92. 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
#93. 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.
Jane Goodall
#94. Animals were my passion from even before I could speak apparently. When I was about 10, 11 I fell in love with Tarzan.
Jane Goodall
#95. 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
#96. 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.
Jane Goodall
#97. 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.
Jane Goodall
#98. 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
#99. 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
#100. 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.
Jane Goodall
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