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

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 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

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

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 provi...

Jane Goodall

Certainly, if you look at human behavior around the world, you have to admit that we can be very aggressive.

Jane Goodall

I got to Africa. I got the opportunity to go and learn, not about any animal, but chimpanzees. I was living in my dream world, the forest in Gombe National Park in Tanzania. It was Tanganyika when I began.

Jane Goodall

Chimps can do all sorts of things we thought that only we could do - like tool-making and abstraction and generalisation. They can learn a language - sign language - and they can use the signs. But when you think of our intellects, even the brightest...

Jane Goodall

I never wanted to be a scientist per se. I wanted to be a naturalist.

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 w...

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

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.

Jane Goodall

I learned from my dog long before I went to Gombe that we weren't the only beings with personalities. What the chimps did was help me to persuade others.

Jane Goodall

The chimpanzee study was - well, it's still going on, and I think it's taught us perhaps more than anything else to be a little humble; that we are, indeed, unique primates, we humans, but we're simply not as different from the rest of the animal kin...

Jane Goodall

Whatever we believe about how we got to be the extraordinary creatures we are today is far less important than bringing our intellect to bear on how do we get together now around the world and get out of the mess that we've made. That's the key thing...

Jane Goodall

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 recog...

Jane Goodall

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

Jane Goodall

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

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

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

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

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

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