Jane Goodall Quotes - Page 8

The hardest part of returning to a truly healthy environment may be changing the current totally unsustainable heavy-meat-eating culture of increasing numbers of people around the world. But we must try. We must make a start, one by one.

We, as humans, have actually developed a sense of social responsibility. We have gone beyond our basic instincts. We can and we do. This is what sets us apart from the chimps. They are extremely brutal and hostile. Your next door neighbor is to be killed unless she is a juicy young female, who hasn't yet had her first baby, in which case you want her.

You better not mess with chimps. They are much stronger than humans.

Chimps are brutal, and it is so deliberate. The males go out and get near the boundary of their territory. And they walk very silently trying hard not to make any noise. They will climb into a tree and stare out over hostile territory for hours. They are waiting for the right opportunity. And then they attack.

Certainly it's very often true that women tend to be a bit quieter and more prepared to sit there and let the animal tell you things.

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.

there have been too many events in my life, and in the lives of my friends, which have defied any kind of scientific explanation. Science does not have appropriate tools for the dissection of the spirit.

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

Some people say, therefore, that violence and war are inevitable. I say rubbish: Our brains are fully capable of controlling instinctive behavior.

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.

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.

It has actually been suggested that warfare may have been the principle 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.

The chimpanzees taught me a lot about nonverbal communication. The big difference between them and us is that they don't have spoken language. Everything else is almost the same: Kissing, embracing, swaggering, shaking the fist.

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.

If you catch somebody doing something wrong, he will just cringe away and curl up. He will not listen anymore. Instead, he will think of how he can counterattack.

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

There are good mothers and bad ones, but most of them are somewhere in-between.

Never be arrogant or abrasive. Treat your opponent respectfully if they really and truly believe they are right.

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.

If plants could be credited with reasoning powers, we would marvel at the imaginative ways they bribe or ensnare other creatures to carry out their wishes.

Hundreds and thousands of young people around the world can break through and can make this a better world for all living things. Once young people know the problems and are empowered to act, they have great power to impact the world.

When you borrow you plan to pay back. We're stealing from our children - so many people have no intention of paying back.

You know the old expression "We haven't inherited the world from our parents, we've borrowed it from our children"? Well it's just not true. We haven't borrowed anything.

Realize that change - whilst we want it to happen fast - is usually the result of a great deal of work, and often comes as a result of a series of compromises (so long as we do not compromise our values).

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.