Jane Goodall is a British anthropologist considered to be the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees. She is known for her over 55-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees.
She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots & Shoots programme, 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. In April 2002, she was named a UN Messenger of Peace. These are some of her most famous quotes over the years:
- “What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
- “We could change the world tomorrow if all the millions of people around the world acted the way they believe.”
- “The greatest danger to our future is apathy.”
- “There is a powerful force unleashed when young people resolve to make a change.”
- “We have the choice to use the gift of our life to make the world a better place–or not to bother.”
- “Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right.”
- “The least I can do is speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves.”
- “One thing I had learned from watching chimpanzees with their infants is that having a child should be fun.”
- “Here we are, the most clever species ever to have lived. So how is it we can destroy the only planet we have?”
- “Thousands of people who say they ‘love’ animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been treated so with little respect and kindness just to make more meat.”
- “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?”
- “Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.”
- “If we do not do something to help these creatures, we make a mockery of the whole concept of justice.”
- “We have a responsibility toward the other life-forms of our planet whose continued existence is threatened by the thoughtless behavior of our own human species.”
- “We find animals doing things that we, in our arrogance, used to think was “just human”.”
- “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.
- “How can you stop yourself from yelling and shouting and accusing everyone of cruelty? The easy answer is that the aggressive approach simply doesn’t work.”
- “Only when our clever brain and our human heart work together in harmony can we achieve our true potential.”
- “I don’t have any idea of who or what God is. But I do believe in some great spiritual power. I feel it particularly when I’m out in nature. It’s just something that’s bigger and stronger than what I am or what anybody is. I feel it. And it’s enough for me.”
- “from the moment when, staring into the eyes of a chimpanzee, I saw a thinking, reasoning personality looking back.”
- “I love dogs, not chimps. Some chimps are nice, and some are horrid. I don’t actually think of them as animals any more than I think of us as animals, although both of us are.”
- “You may not believe in evolution, and that’s all right. How we humans came to be the way we are is far less important that how we should act now to get out of the mess we have made for ourselves.”
- “You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you.”
- “Cruelty is a terrible thing. I believe it is the worst human sin.”
- “We have so far to go to realize our human potential for compassion, altruism, and love.”
- “I’d like to be remembered as someone who really helped people to have a little humility and realize that we are part of the animal kingdom, not separated from it.”
