Quotes from 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.

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

Chimps are very quick to have a sudden fight or aggressive episode, but they're equally as good at reconciliation.

I miss the early days; I do. I was so lucky. I basically had it to myself, learning about these chimpanzees. Nobody knew anything about them. Discovering their different personalities, different life histories. I was lucky.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If you do microcredit with men, they tend to quickly drink it. They don't pay you back.

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

Here we are, the most clever species ever to have lived. So how is it we can destroy the only planet we have?

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.

The greatest danger to our future is apathy.

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

A good mother is protective but not over-protective. She's patient, she's affectionate, she's playful, but above all she is supportive.

If you consciously say 'I won't do it!' to yourself, then you have a good chance that you won't.

I shouldn't have named the chimps. It wasn't scientific. I didn't know. I knew nothing. And worse sin of all was that I was ascribing to them emotions like happiness, sadness and so forth.

You can't do everything. You can't do health and forestry and agriculture. You've got to focus and do one or the other.

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

I still think we are smart enough to not destroy planet Earth, our only home.

It's not a pretty picture, but there are reasons for hope.

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