“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
— Jane Goodall
“Let us develop respect for all living things. Let us try to replace violence and intolerance with understanding and compassion. And love.”
“Cumulatively small decisions, choices, actions, make a very big difference.”
“Only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, we will help. Only if we help, we shall be saved.”
“Children can change the world.”
“The greatest danger to our future is apathy.”
“Having respect for animals makes us better humans...”
“Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.”
“It’s up to us to save the world for tomorrow: it’s up to you and me.”
“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.”
“Just remember – if you are really and truly determined to work with animals, somehow, either now or later, you will find a way to do it. But you have to want it desperately, work hard, take advantage of an opportunity – and never give up.”
“Young people, when informed and empowered, when they realize that what they do truly makes a difference, can indeed change the world.”
“Here we are, the most clever species ever to have lived. So how is it we can destroy the only planet we have?”
“My mother always taught us that if people don’t agree with you, the important thing is to listen to them. But if you’ve listened to them carefully and you still think that you’re right, then you must have the courage of your convictions.”
“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?”
“As thy days, so shall thy strength be.”
“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.”
“My hope for the future is that we learn wisdom again.”
“Your life matters. You can’t live through a day without making an impact on the world. And what’s most important is to think about the impact of your actions on the world around you.”
“I don’t care two hoots about civilization. I want to wander in the wild.”
“We have the choice to use the gift of our life to make the world a better place – or not to bother.”
“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.”
“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.”
“The least I can do is speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves.”
“What makes us human, I think, is an ability to ask questions, a consequence of our sophisticated spoken language.”
“My mission is to create a world where we can live in harmony with nature.”
“Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right.”
“I had a wonderful teacher about animal behavior – my dog Rusty. He taught me that animals have personalities, minds, and feelings.”
“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.”
“Be assured that our individual actions, collectively, make a huge difference.”
“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.”
“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.”
“If we kill off the wild, then we are killing a part of our souls.”
“Science demands objective factual evidence – proof; spiritual experience is subjective and leads to faith.”
“Lasting change is a series of compromises. And compromise is all right, as long your values don’t change.”
“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.”
“We could change the world tomorrow if all the millions of people around the world acted the way they believe.”
“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 think the most important thing is to keep active and to hope that your mind stays active.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“To me, trees are living beings and they have their own sort of personalities.”
“It would be absolutely useless for any of us to work to save wildlife without working to educate the next generation of conservationists.”
“It’s not a pretty picture, but there are reasons for hope.”
“Today it is generally accepted that although the earliest humans probably ate some meat, it was unlikely to have played a major role in their diet. Plants would have been a much more important source of food.”
“Anyone who tries to improve the lives of animals invariably comes in for criticism from those who believe such efforts are misplaced in a world of suffering humanity.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“The cheapest and most efficient way of slowing down global warming is to protect and restore the forests, particularly the tropical forests.”
“If we could just stop building up armies and things like that, we would have all the money we need for wildlife and poverty.”
“I believe the only hope for mankind lies in the hands of our young people.”
“We have so far to go to realize our human potential for compassion, altruism, and love.”
“I have found that to love and be loved is the most empowering and exhilarating of all human emotions.”
“Chimps taught us we’re not separated from the animal kingdom, we’re a part of it.”
“We find animals doing things that we, in our arrogance, used to think was “just human”.”
“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.”
“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 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.”
“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.”
“Well, in some ways we’re not successful at all. We’re destroying our home. That’s not a bit successful.”
“And always I have this feeling – which may not be true at all – that I am being used as a messenger.”
“We are unique. Chimpanzees are unique. Dogs are unique. But we humans are just not as different as we used to think.”
“Especially now when views are becoming more polarized, we must work to understand each other across political, religious and national boundaries.”
“The only possible way to get somebody to change is to reach into their hearts.”
“Researchers find it very necessary to keep blinkers on. They don’t want to admit that the animals they are working with have feelings.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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 like some animals more than some people, some people more than some animals.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I am living in the Africa I have always longed for, always felt stirring in my blood.”
“It was because the chimps are so eye-catching, so like us and teach us so much that my work was recognised worldwide.”
“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.”
“Even chimps understand the concept – if a troop of chimps enters a fruit tree, they will only pick the fruits that are ripe and leave the others growing. That is sustainability.”
“I wanted to talk to the animals like Dr. Dolittle.”
“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 think the best evenings are when we have messages, things that make us think, but we can also laugh and enjoy each other’s company.”
“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.”
“One thing I had learned from watching chimpanzees with their infants is that having a child should be fun.”
“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.”
“Animals were my passion from even before I could speak apparently. When I was about 10, 11 I fell in love with Tarzan.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“As a child, we couldn’t afford holidays overseas, so instead I travelled through books. I was inspired by Dr Dolittle and Tarzan.”
“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.””
“Some people say, therefore, that violence and war are inevitable. I say rubbish: Our brains are fully capable of controlling instinctive behavior.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
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