Jane Goodall Quotes

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Let us develop respect for all living things. Let us try to replace violence and intolerance with understanding and compassion. And love.

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

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.

It was because the chimps are so eye-catching, so like us and teach us so much that my work was recognised worldwide.

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

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 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.