Jane Goodall Quotes

“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.”

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

“Farm animals are far more aware and intelligent than we ever imagined and, despite having been bred as domestic slaves, they are individual beings in their own right. As such, they deserve our respect. And our help. Who will plead for them if we are silent?”

“Here we are, arguably the most intelligent being that’s ever walked planet Earth, with this extraordinary brain, yet we’re destroying the only home we have.”

“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.”

“I never wanted to give up. I thought I might have to. Especially at the beginning when chimpanzees had never seen a white person before.They gave one look at me and ran away! They were scared, but eventually I got their trust.”

“I think empathy is really important, and I think only when our clever brain and our human heart work together in harmony can we achieve our full potential.”

“If we kill off the wild, then we are killing a part of our souls.”

“It’s knowing what can be done that gives people the courage to fight.”

“Let us develop respect for all living things. Let us try to replace violence and intolerance with understanding and compassion. And love.”

“My mission is to create a world where we can live in harmony with nature.”

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

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

“The biggest problem we have as environmental activists is to fight the power of money.”

“The chimpanzee study 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 kingdom as we used to think.”

“The greatest danger to our future is apathy.”

“The indigenous people around the world before they made a major decision used to ask themselves: how does this decision affect our people seven generations ahead?”

“The least I can do is speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves.”

“The more I learned about the chimps, the more I realised how like us they were.”

“There’s too many of us. It’s a planet of finite resources – and we’re using them up. And that’s going to mean so much suffering in the future.”

“To me, cruelty is the worst of human sins. Once we accept that a living creature has feelings and suffers pain, then by knowingly and deliberately inflicting suffering on that creature, we are guilty, whether it be human or animal.”

“To reconnect with nature is key if we want to save the planet.”

“We could change the world tomorrow if all the millions of people around the world acted the way they believe.”

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

“We’re poisoning the land, we’re poisoning animals, and I truly believe we’re poisoning ourselves.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Michael Pollan likens consumer choices to pulling single threads out of a garment. We pull a thread from the garment when we refuse to purchase eggs or meat from birds who were raised in confinement, whose beaks were clipped so they could never once taste their natural diet of worms and insects. We pull out a thread when we refuse to bring home a hormone-fattened turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. We pull a thread when we refuse to buy meat or dairy products from cows who were never allowed to chew grass, or breathe fresh air, or feel the warm sun on their backs.

The more threads we pull, the more difficult it is for the industry to stay intact. You demand eggs and meat without hormones, and the industry will have to figure out how it can raise farm animals without them. Let the animals graze outside and it slows production. Eventually the whole thing will have to unravel.

If the factory farm does indeed unravel - and it must - then there is hope that we can, gradually, reverse the environmental damage it has caused. Once the animal feed operations have gone and livestock are once again able to graze, there will be a massive reduction in the agricultural chemicals currently used to grow grain for animals. And eventually, the horrendous contamination caused by animal waste can be cleaned up. None of this will be easy.”

“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?”

“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.”