Top 160 Jane Goodall Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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

52. “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

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

— Jane Goodall

54. “I have found that to love and be loved is the most empowering and exhilarating of all human emotions.”

— Jane Goodall

55. “I wanted to talk to the animals like Dr. Dolittle.”

— Jane Goodall

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

— Jane Goodall

57. “I like some animals more than some people, some people more than some animals.”

— Jane Goodall

58. “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

59. “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

60. “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

61. “I believe the only hope for mankind lies in the hands of our young people.”

— Jane Goodall

62. “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

63. “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

64. “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

65. “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

66. “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

67. “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

68. “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.”

— Jane Goodall

69. “The only possible way to get somebody to change is to reach into their hearts.”

— Jane Goodall

70. “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.”

— Jane Goodall

71. “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.”

— Jane Goodall

72. “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

73. “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

74. “We find animals doing things that we, in our arrogance, used to think was “just human”.”

— Jane Goodall

75. “We have so far to go to realize our human potential for compassion, altruism, and love.”

— Jane Goodall

76. “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

77. “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

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

— Jane Goodall

79. “Especially now when views are becoming more polarized, we must work to understand each other across political, religious and national boundaries.”

— Jane Goodall

80. “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.”

— Jane Goodall

81. “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

82. “The cheapest and most efficient way of slowing down global warming is to protect and restore the forests, particularly the tropical forests.”

— Jane Goodall

83. “I do have hope. Nature is enormously resilient, humans are vastly intelligent, the energy and enthusiasm that can be kindled among young people seems without limit, and he human spirit is indomitable. But if we want life, we will have to stop depending on someone else to save the world. It is up to us-you and me, all of us. Myself, I have placed my faith in the children.”

— Jane Goodall

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

— Jane Goodall

85. “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

86. “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

87. “And always I have this feeling – which may not be true at all – that I am being used as a messenger.”

— Jane Goodall

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

— Jane Goodall

89. “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.”

— Jane Goodall

90. “Some people say... that violence and war are inevitable. I say rubbish: Our brains are fully capable of controlling instinctive behavior. We’re not very good at it though, are we?”

— Jane Goodall

91. “You’re thinking about putting scientists into small cages and doing research on them. I wish it could happen sometimes.”

— Jane Goodall

92. “So, let us move forward with faith in ourselves, in our intelligence, in our indomitable spirit. Let us develop respect for all living things. Let us try to replace violence and intolerance with understanding and compassion and love.”

— Jane Goodall

93. “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

94. “Researchers find it very necessary to keep blinkers on. They don’t want to admit that the animals they are working with have feelings.”

— Jane Goodall

95. “Hope does not deny the evil, but is a response to it.”

— Jane Goodall

96. “Hope is often misunderstood. People tend to think that it is simply passive wishful thinking: I hope something will happen but I’m not going to do anything about it. This is indeed the opposite of real hope, which requires action and engagement.”

— Jane Goodall

97. “We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

— Jane Goodall

98. “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

99. “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.”

— 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