Quotes by Jane Goodall

About Jane Goodall:

Dame Jane Morris Goodall is an English primatologist, ethologist, anthropologist, and UN Messenger of Peace. Considered to be the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is best known for her 55-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania. She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots & Shoots program, and she has worked extensively on conservation and animal welfare issues. She has served on the board of the Nonhuman Rights Project since its founding in 1996.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

Jane Goodall

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

As I'm traveling around, I meet many small children. And when I look at a small and think how we've harmed this beautiful planet since I was that age, I feel a kind of desperation, anger, shame. I don't know what I feel; I just don't know what the em...

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

I had been told from school onwards that the best definition of a human being was 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

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 lea...

Jane Goodall

I was born in London in England in 1934. I went through, as a child, the horrors of World War II, through a time when food was rationed and we learned to be very careful, and we never had more to eat than what we needed to eat. There was no waste. Ev...

Jane Goodall

My family has very strong women. 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 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

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.

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 realised the chimpanzees were disappearing. I had worldwide recognition and a gift of communication. I had to use them.

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

I think my message to the politicians who have within their power the ability to make change is, 'Do you really, really not care about the future of your great-grandchildren? Because if we let the world continue to be destroyed the way we are now, wh...

Jane Goodall

I am not deeply involved in Australian politics but I know there are prime ministers, governments around the world who are not acting responsibly in relation to climate change.

Jane Goodall

I've watched a lot of people who became famous who completely change and I think it's because they tend to believe all the hype that's out there. I don't think there's that much hype about me.

Jane Goodall

When I was 10 years old, I loved - I loved books, and I used to haunt the secondhand bookshop. And I found a little book I could just afford, and I bought it, and I took it home. And I climbed up my favorite tree, and I read that book from cover to c...

Jane Goodall

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

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 was brought up to understand Darwin's theory of evolution. I spent hours and hours in the Natural History Museum in London looking at the descriptions of how different kinds of animals had evolved, looking at the sequence of fossil bones looking gr...

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...

Jane Goodall

Author Bio

  • NameJane Goodall
  • DescriptionBritish primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist
  • AliasesDame Jane Morris Goodall; Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall
  • BornApril 3, 1934
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionZoologist; Anthropologist; Primatologist; Scientist; Ethologist
  • AwardsOfficer Of The Legion Of Honour; Dame Commander Of The Order Of The British Empire; Princess Of Asturias Award - Technical And Scientific Research; William Procter Prize For Scientific Achievement; Tyler Prize For Environmental Achievement