Jane Goodall is a popular name that we hear here and there. She is a legendary dermatologist and she has literally given her life to studying the chimpanzees as well as nature. She has made achieved milestones in her field and now she is well known for speaking about nature. She is an inspiration for today’s youth and that’s why we are sharing some of the Jane Goodall Quotes.
Jane Goodall Quotes
“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
“My family has a very strong woman. My mother never laughed at my dream of Africa, even though everyone else did because we didn’t have any money, because Africa was the ‘dark continent’, and because I was a girl.” Jane Goodall
“I didn’t want to become a professor or get tenure or teach or anything. All I wanted to do was get a degree because Louis Leakey said I needed one, which was right, and once I succeeded I could get back to the field.” Jane Goodall
“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
“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
“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
“It was because the chimps are so eye-catching, so like us and teach us so much that my work was recognized worldwide.” Jane Goodall
“When I look back over my life it’s almost as if there was a plan laid out for me – from the little girl who was so passionate about animals who longed to go to Africa and whose family couldn’t afford to put her through college. Everyone laughed at my dreams. I was supposed to be a secretary in Bournemouth.” Jane Goodall
“I thought my life was mapped out. Research, living in the forest, teaching, and writing. But in ’86 I went to a conference and realized the chimpanzees were disappearing. I had worldwide recognition and a gift of communication. I had to use them.” Jane Goodall
“Most Africans don’t get to see these wild animals at all. Once they see and learn about them, they are much more likely to become involved in protecting the environment.” Jane Goodall
“When I was two, a dragonfly flew near me. A man knocked it to the ground and trod on it. I remember crying because I’d caused the dragonfly to be killed.” Jane Goodall
“In Tanzania, the chimps are isolated in a very tiny patch of forest. I flew over it 13 years ago and realized that, basically, all the trees had gone, that people all around the park are struggling to survive. It became very clear that there was no way to protect the chimps while the people were in this dire circumstance.” Jane Goodall
“In 1975, when my students were kidnapped by rebels, I was accused of hiding instead of trying to save them, and of not giving enough money for their ransom. I wasn’t believed.” Jane Goodall
“The part that always shocked me was the inter-community violence among the chimps: the patrols and the vicious attacks on strangers that lead to death. It’s an unfortunate parallel to human behavior – they have a dark side just as we do. We have less excuse because we can deliberate, so I believe only we are capable of true calculated evil.” Jane Goodall
“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
“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.” Jane Goodall
“It’s been proven by quite a few studies that plants are good for our psychological development. If you green an area, the rate of crime goes down. Torture victims begin to recover when they spend time outside in a garden with flowers. So we need them, in some deep psychological sense, which I don’t suppose anybody really understands yet.” Jane Goodall
“I did this book ‘Harvest for Hope,’ and I learned so much about food. And one thing I learned is that we have the guts not of a carnivore, but of an herbivore. Herbivore guts are very long because they have to get the last bit of nutrition out of leaves and things.” Jane Goodall
“My mother always used to say, ‘Well, if you had been born a little girl growing up in Egypt, you would go to church or go to worship Allah, but surely if those people are worshipping a God, it must be the same God’ – that’s what she always said. The same God with different names.” Jane Goodall
“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
Jane Goodall Inspirational Quotes
“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
“War had always seemed to me to be a purely human behavior. Accounts of warlike behavior date back to the very first written records of human history; it seemed to be an almost universal characteristic of human groups.” Jane Goodall
“I think the most important thing is to keep active and to hope that your mind stays active.” Jane Goodall
“I had been told from school onwards that the best definition of a human being was the 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
“We have language and they do not. Chimps communicate by embracing, patting, looking – all these things. And they have lots of sounds. But they cannot sit and discuss. They cannot teach about things that are not present, as far as we know.” Jane Goodall
“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.” Jane Goodall
“I don’t spend that much time being introspective, believe it or not. All I know is that I grew up not questioning God because that’s how you are. God was there like the birds and the wind.” Jane Goodall
“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
“I think we’re still in a muddle with our language because once you get words and a spoken language it gets harder to communicate.” Jane Goodall
“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.” Jane Goodall
“When I began in 1960, individuality wasn’t an accepted thing to look for; it was about species-specific behavior. But animal behavior is not hard science.” There’s room for intuition. Jane Goodall
“Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right.” Jane Goodall
“Certainly, if you look at human behavior around the world, you have to admit that we can be very aggressive. Jane Goodall
“It was both fascinating and appalling to learn that chimpanzees were capable of hostile and territorial behavior that was not unlike certain forms of primitive human warfare.” Jane Goodall
“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
“What makes us human, I think, is an ability to ask questions, a consequence of our sophisticated spoken language.” Jane Goodall
“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
“It has actually been suggested that warfare may have been the principal evolutionary pressure that created the huge gap between the human brain and that of our closest living relatives, the anthropoid apes. Whole groups of hominids with inferior brains could not win wars and were therefore exterminated.” Jane Goodall
“I’m always pushing for human responsibility. Given that chimpanzees and many other animals are sentient and sapient, then we should treat them with respect.” Jane Goodall
“Chimps are very quick to have a sudden fight or aggressive episode, but they’re equally as good at reconciliation.” Jane Goodall