Jane Goodall Quotes (48 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Jane Goodall: 48 quotes 144 likes

Famous Jane Goodall Quotes

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

Jane Goodall

“Only if we understand can we care. Only if we care will we help. Only if we help shall they be saved.”

Jane Goodall

Reported in Patti Denys, Mary Holmes, Animal Magnetism: At Home With Celebrities & Their Animal Companions (1998), p. 106
Source: Jane Goodall: 40 Years at Gombe

“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

Jane Goodall

“Here we are, the most clever species ever to have lived. So how is it we can destroy the only planet we have?”

Jane Goodall

“We have the choice to use the gift of our life to make the world a better place--or not to bother”

Jane Goodall

“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

Reported in Janelle Rohr, Animal rights: opposing viewpoints (1989), p. 100; Jane Goodall and Jennifer Lindsey, Jane Goodall: 40 Years at Gombe (1999), p. 6. Occasionally misreported in truncated form, as "The least I can do is speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves", in, e.g., quote honored on XOEarth eco money http://xoearth.org/jane-goodall/

Jane Goodall Quotes about animals

“Thousands of people who say they "love" animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been utterly deprived of everything that could make their lives worth living and who endured the awful suffering and the terror of the abattoirs— and the journey to get there— before finally leaving their miserable world, only too often after a painful death.”

Jane Goodall

The Ten Trusts (2003), p. xv

“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

" An Interview with Jane Goodall https://web.archive.org/web/20100920074838/http://www.idausa.org:80/essays/goodallinterview.html", In Defense of Animals (date unknown)
Context: Researchers find it very necessary to keep blinkers on. They don't want to admit that the animals they are working with have feelings. They don't want to admit that they might have minds and personalities because that would make it quite difficult for them to do what they do; so we find that within the lab communities there is a very strong resistance among the researchers to admitting that animals have minds, personalities and feelings.

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

Jane Goodall

Reported in Brad Dunn, "Change of Scenery", When They Were 22: 100 Famous People at the Turning Point in Their Lives (2006), p. 51

“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

Source: Reason for Hope: a Spiritual Journey (2000), p. 217

“Animals tell us something. If the animals have suffered this way [from GMOs], potentially for us, let’s listen to what they’re telling us. Let’s take heed.”

Jane Goodall

“But if the same tests, the same foods are examined by an independent scientist, then it turns out that in almost every case there are quite serious harms done to the rats, the mice or the other poor unfortunate animals, particularly internal organs like liver and kidneys and things of that sort.”

Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall Godall Says Animals Suffer From Genetically Modified Foods http://www.marketwatch.com/story/goodall-says-animals-suffer-from-genetically-modified-foods-2015-04-28?siteid=yhoof2 (2015-04-28)

Jane Goodall Quotes

“Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don't believe is right.”

Jane Goodall

Reported in Yolanda Brooks, Do Animals Have Rights? (2008), p. 23

Powerful , People , Change

“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

Source: Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating

Food , Idea

“In what terms should we think of these beings, nonhuman yet possessing so very many human-like characteristics? How should we treat them? Surely we should treat them with the same consideration and kindness as we show to other humans; and as we recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes? Yes.”

Jane Goodall

"Chimpanzees - Bridging the Gap", in Paola Cavalieri, Peter Singer, The Great Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity (1996), p. 14

Thinking

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

Jane Goodall

Source: Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating

Love

“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

Source: Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey

Love

“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

Harvest for Hope (2006)

Food

“The greatest danger to our future is apathy.”

Jane Goodall

"The Power of One", Time Magazine (26 August 2002)

Powerful , Future

“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.”

Jane Goodall

As quoted in Going Blue: A Teen Guide to Saving Our Oceans, Lakes, Rivers, & Wetlands (2010) by Cathryn Berger Kaye and Philippe Cousteau, p. 14

Thinking

“Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.”

Jane Goodall

With Love (1999)

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

In response to: "If chimps are so much like us, why are they endangered while humans dominate the globe?" Discover Magazine interview with Virginia Morell (28 March 2007)

Way , Home , Success

“I think if we study the primates, we notice that a lot of these things that we value in ourselves, such as human morality, have a connection with primate behavior.”

Jane Goodall

Frans de Waal, in a NOVA interview, " The Bonobo in All of Us" PBS (1 January 2007) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/bonobo-all-us.html; quotes from this interview were for some time misplaced on this page, which probably generated similar misattributions elsewhere, and the misplacement was not discovered until after this quotation had been selected for Quote of the Day, as a quote of Goodall. Corrections were subsequently made here, during the day the quote was posted as QOTD.
Misattributed
Context: I think if we study the primates, we notice that a lot of these things that we value in ourselves, such as human morality, have a connection with primate behavior. This completely changes the perspective, if you start thinking that actually we tap into our biological resources to become moral beings. That gives a completely different view of ourselves than this nasty selfish-gene type view that has been promoted for the last 25 years.

Behavior , Thinking , Study

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

Jane Goodall

Source: Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey

Feeling

“The greatest danger to our future is apathy. We cannot expect those living in poverty and ignorance to worry about saving the world. For those of us able to read this magazine, it is different. We can do something to preserve our planet.”

Jane Goodall

"The Power of One", TIME Magazine (26 August 2002) http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1003125,00.html

World , Future , Reading

“One thing I had learned from watching chimpanzees with their infants is that having a child should be fun.”

Jane Goodall

For Parents , Learning

“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

World , Thinking , Sense

“If we do not do something to help these creatures, we make a mockery of the whole concept of justice.”

Jane Goodall

Justice , Help

“We can't leave people in abject poverty, so we need to raise the standard of living for 80% of the world's people, while bringing it down considerably for the 20% who are destroying our natural resources.”

Jane Goodall

Subject: Jane Goodall, primatologist and conservationist http://www.dailysummit.net/says/interview260802.htm, interviewed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (2002)

People , World , Nature

“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

Thinking

“Lasting change is a series of compromises. And compromise is alright, as long your values don't change.”

Jane Goodall

Subject: Jane Goodall, primatologist and conservationist http://www.dailysummit.net/says/interview260802.htm, interviewed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (2002)

Change

“My mission is to create a world where we can live in harmony with nature. And can I do that alone? No. So there is a whole army of youth that can do it. So I suppose my mission is to reach as many of those young people as I can through my own efforts.”

Jane Goodall

Then & Now: Jane Goodall (2005)

People , Youth , World , Nature

“Is it not possible that the chimpanzees are responding to some feeling like awe? A feeling generated by the mystery of water; water that seems alive, always rushing past yet never going, always the same yet ever different. Was it perhaps similar feelings of awe that gave rise to the first animistic religions, the worship of the elements and the mysteries of nature over which there was no control? Only when our prehistoric ancestors developed language would it have been possible to discuss such internal feelings and create a shared religion.”

Jane Goodall

Source: Reason for Hope: a Spiritual Journey (2000), p. 189

Religion , Feeling , Nature , Water

“So this is my effort to bring back the hope that we must have if we are to change direction.... I think to be fully human, we need to have meaning in our lives, and that's what I am trying to help these young people to find.”

Jane Goodall

Then & Now: Jane Goodall (2005)

People , Hope , Thinking , Effort

“As I traveled, talking about these issues, I met so many young people who had lost hope. Some were depressed; some were apathetic; some were angry and violent. And when I talked to them, they all more or less felt this way because we had compromised their future and the world of tomorrow was not going to sustain their great-grandchildren.”

Jane Goodall

Then & Now: Jane Goodall (2005)

People , World , Hope , Way

“How would I have turned out, I sometimes wonder, had I grown up in a house that stifled enterprise by imposing harsh and senseless discipline? Or in an atmosphere of overindulgence, in a household where there were no rules, no boundaries drawn? My mother certainly understood the importance of discipline, but she always explained why some things were not allowed. Above all, she tried to be fair and to be consistent.”

Jane Goodall

Source: Reason for Hope: a Spiritual Journey (2000), p. iv

Housing

“They communicate, but their communication system is through touch, posture, looks – body language you could call it, but it goes a bit deeper than that. They can learn 400 or more signs in American sign language.”

Jane Goodall

Wanderlust interview (2009)

Communication , Learning

“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

Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe (2000), p. 215

Love , Forgetting

“At the moment, money from Gombe tourism goes into one pot for Tanzania National Parks and it has to pay for the whole infrastructure of everything. But through our TACARE [community development] programme, we’ve benefited local people hugely.
The thing is about tourism and research is that they can both focus attention on the place and help to preserve it. It’s tourism involvement with the mountain gorillas that saved them.
During the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s, people on both sides were being told, “Don’t touch the gorillas”, as it was the second biggest foreign exchange earner after tea in the country. So both sides hoped to win and continue exploiting gorillas.
So the government can see the value of tourism, but the danger is they over-exploit it. They say, “We’re getting all this money for [gorilla-tracking groups of] six people, now we’ll let it be 12”, and they get more money for tours, so they make it 20. That’s the danger; that they end up killing what people have come to see.”

Jane Goodall

Wanderlust interview (2009)

Money , People , Hope , Mountain

“This very real difference between GM plants and their conventional counterparts is one of the basic truths that biotech proponents have endeavoured to obscure. As part of the process, they portrayed the various concerns as merely the ignorant opinions of misinformed individuals – and derided them as not only unscientific, but anti-science.
They then set to work to convince the public and government officials, through the dissemination of false information, that there was an overwhelming expert consensus, based on solid evidence, that the new foods were safe. Yet this, as Druker points out, was clearly not true.
Druker describes how amazingly successful the biotech lobby has been – and the extent to which the general public and government decision makers have been hoodwinked by the clever and methodical twisting of the facts and the propagation of many myths. Moreover, it appears that a number of respected scientific institutions, as well as many eminent scientists, were complicit in this relentless spreading of disinformation.”

Jane Goodall

Senior academic condemns ‘deluded’ supporters of GM food as being ‘anti-science’ and ignoring evidence of dangers (4 March 2015) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2979645/Senior-academic-condemns-deluded-supporters-GM-food-anti-science-ignoring-evidence-dangers.html#ixzz4BZ4NnMuY
Foreword to Altered Genes, Twisted Truth (2015)

Truth , Food , Decision , Appearance

“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

Referring to chimpanzees, reported in Jane Goodall: Primatologist and Animal Activist (2009) by Connie Jankowski, p. 13

Life , Behavior , Understanding , Nature

“Louis deliberately chose someone who hadn’t been to university because theories of animal behaviour at that time were very rigid, and Louis didn’t want someone whose mind was biased in that way. Wise man. But still I had the responsibility to prove myself. I remember looking up at the hills and wondering, “Can I do it?””

Jane Goodall

Wanderlust interview (2009)

Way , Universe , Time , Animals

“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.”

Jane Goodall

My Life with the Chimpanzees (1996), p. 113

Way , Animals

“I do not want to discuss evolution in such depth, however, only touch on it from my own perspective: from the moment when I stood on the Serengeti plains holding the fossilized bones of ancient creatures in my hands to the moment when, staring into the eyes of a chimpanzee, I saw a thinking, reasoning personality looking back. 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.”

Jane Goodall

Source: Reason for Hope: a Spiritual Journey (2000), p. xx

Way , Thinking , Personality

“The more we learn of the true nature of non-human animals, especially those with complex brains and corresponding complex social behavior, the more ethical concerns are raised regarding their use in the service of man — whether this be in entertainment, as "pets," for food, in research laboratories, or any of the other uses to which we subject them.”

Jane Goodall

Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe (2000), p. 245

Food , Behavior , Nature , Learning

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

Jane Goodall

Reported in Elizabeth LeReverend, "The Irrepressible Dr. Jane Goodall", Verge Magazine (2010)

Understanding

“You can imagine my dismay when I got to Cambridge and found that I had done everything wrong. I shouldn't have named the chimps; I should have given them numbers. I couldn't talk about their personalities, their minds or their feelings because that was unique to us.”

Jane Goodall

Then & Now: Jane Goodall (2005)

Feeling , Imagination , Personality

“It is our disregard for nature and our disrespect of the animals we should share the planet with that has caused this pandemic, that was predicted long ago.”

Jane Goodall

" Jane Goodall says 'disrespect for animals' caused pandemic https://news.yahoo.com/jane-goodall-says-disrespect-animals-caused-pandemic-091036641.html", Yahoo News, April 11, 2020.

Animals , Nature