70 Jane Goodall Famous Quotes About Animals, Life, Hope

These Jane Goodall famous quotes about animals will teach you a lot about the connection between mother nature and humans.

Dame Jane Morris Goodall was born on 3 April 1934 is an English primatologist and anthropologist. She is considered to be the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees who has dedicated her life to nature and chimpanzees. Jane Goodall’s quotes and sayings will teach you something new about the environment, humans, and the state of our earth.

Jane Goodall Quotes About Life And Hope

How did Jane Goodall change the world?

Jane Goodall is famous for her 60 years of study of Chimpanzees since she went to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania in 1960 at the age of 26. Here she witnessed the human-like behavior of chimpanzees.

Equipped with only binoculars, a notebook, and curiosity about wildlife, Goodall has changed the world with her nearly 60 years of groundbreaking work where she not only shown us the urgent need to protect chimpanzees from extinction but also has redefined species conservation to include the need of environment and local people.

Goodall is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots & Shoots programme. She has worked broadly on animal welfare issues. She is also a responsible member of the World Future Council.

Here we are sharing a collection of Jane Goodall’s famous quotes and sayings about animals, the environment, and life to inspire you to understand the nature better.

Jane Goodall Quotes

“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

“Hope is a survival trait and without it, we perish” ― Jane Goodall

“My role in life is to give people hope, because if you run out of hope, we may as well give up.” ― Jane Goodall

“Just tell people stories, try and find out who they are, try and find something that links you with them.” ― Jane Goodall

“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.” – Jane Goodall

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

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

“Chimpanzees, more than any other living creature, have helped us to understand that there is no sharp line between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom. It’s a very blurry line, and it’s getting more blurry all the time.” – Jane Goodall

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

 “I do have reasons for hope: our clever brains, the resilience of nature, the indomitable human spirit, and above all, the commitment of young people when they’re empowered to take action.” – Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall Famous Quotes

“We have the choice to use the gift of our life to make the world a better place ― or not to bother.” – 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 recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes? Yes.” – Jane Goodall

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

“Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans have been living for hundreds of thousands of years in their forest, living fantastic lives, never overpopulating, never destroying the forest. I would say that they have been in a way more successful than us as far as being in harmony with the environment.” – Jane Goodall

“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.” – Jane Goodall

“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you.” – Jane Goodall

“The greatest danger to our future is apathy.” – Jane Goodall

“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” – Jane Goodall

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

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

Jane Goodall Quotes About Animals

“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 is 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.” – Jane Goodall

“We have so far to go to realize our human potential for compassion, altruism, and love.” – Jane Goodall

“What makes us human, I think, is an ability to ask questions, a consequence of our sophisticated spoken language.” – Jane Goodall

“I like some animals more than some people, some people more than some animals.” – Jane Goodall

“Lasting change is a series of compromises. And compromise is all right, as long your values don’t change.” – Jane Goodall

“We can’t leave people in abject poverty, so we need to raise the standard of living for 80% of the world’s people, while bringing it down considerably for the 20% who are destroying our natural resources.” – Jane Goodall

“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.” – Jane Goodall

“Without patience, I could never have succeeded.” – Jane Goodall

“Consider the farmer who sprays his fields with insecticide to kill the bugs that are damaging his crops. He kills thousands of harmless insects as well, including some that actually do good, such as bees that pollinate the flowers and give us honey. Creatures that feed on insects, especially birds, also get sick and die. In the end, because the poisonous chemicals get widely distributed, humans may become sick, too.” ― Jane Goodall, My Life with the Chimpanzees

“Some people say… that violence and war are inevitable. I say rubbish: Our brains are fully capable of controlling instinctive behavior. We’re not very good at it though, are we?” – Jane Goodall

Dr. Jane Goodall Quotes About Chimpanzees

“It actually doesn’t take much to be considered a difficult woman. That’s why there are so many of us.” – Jane Goodall

“As thy days, so shall thy strength be.” – Jane Goodall

“Any little thing that brings us back into communion with the natural world and the spiritual power that permeates all life will help us to move a little further along the path of human moral and spiritual evolution.” – Jane Goodall

“Nature can win if we give her a chance” – Jane Goodall

“That is our hope. Because if we all start listening and helping, then surely, together, we can make the world a better place for all living things. Can’t we?” – Jane Goodall

“We are, indeed, often cruel and evil. Nobody can deny this. We gang up on each one another, we torture each other, with words as well as deeds, we fight, we kill. But we are also capable of the most noble, generous, and heroic behavior.” – Jane Goodall

“And always I have this feeling ― which may not be true at all ― that I am being used as a messenger.” – Jane Goodall

“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 than how we should act now to get out of the mess we have made for ourselves.” – Jane Goodall

“Cultural speciation had been crippling to human moral and spiritual growth. It had hindered freedom of thought, limited our thinking, imprisoned us in the cultures into which we had been born.” – Jane Goodall

“We find animals doing things that we, in our arrogance, used to think was ‘just human.’” – Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall Quotes About Life And Hope

“And I thought how sad it was that, for all our sophisticated intellect, for all our noble aspirations, our aggressive behavior was not just similar in many ways to that of the chimpanzees – it was even worse. Worse because human beings have the potential to rise above their baser instincts, whereas chimpanzees probably do not.” – Jane Goodall

“There is a powerful force unleashed when young people resolve to make a change.” – Jane Goodall

“I don’t think that faith, whatever you’re being faithful about, really can be scientifically explained. And I don’t want to explain this whole life business through truth, science. There’s so much mystery. There’s so much awe.” – Jane Goodall

“Words can be said in bitterness and anger, and often there seems to be an element of truth in the nastiness. And words don’t go away, they just echo around.” – Jane Goodall

“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? 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.” – Jane Goodall

“Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.” – Jane Goodall

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

“I think the most important thing is to keep active and to hope that your mind stays active.” – Jane Goodall

“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.” – Jane Goodall

“From my perspective, I absolutely believe in a greater spiritual power, far greater than I am, from which I have derived strength in moments of sadness or fear. That’s what I believe, and it was very, very strong in the forest.” – Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall Quotes About Environment

“You cannot share your life with a dog, as I had done in Bournemouth, or a cat, and not know perfectly well that animals have personalities and minds and feelings.” – Jane Goodall

“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 … Environmental responsibility ― for if there is no God, then, obviously, it is up to us to put things right.” – Jane Goodall

“People say maybe we have a soul and chimpanzees don’t. I feel that it’s quite possible that if we have souls, chimpanzees have souls as well.” – Jane Goodall

“If we do not do something to help these creatures, we make a mockery of the whole concept of justice.” – Jane Goodall

“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?” – Jane Goodall

“I’m always pushing for human responsibility. Given that chimpanzees and many other animals are sentient and sapient, then we should treat them with respect.” – Jane Goodall

“Each one of us matters, has a role to play, and makes a difference. Each one of us must take responsibility for our own lives, and above all, show respect and love for living things around us, especially each other.” – Jane Goodall

“Peace starts within.” ― Jane Goodall

“Most of us don’t realize the difference we could make. We love to shrug off our own responsibilities, to point fingers at others. ‘Surely,’ we say, ‘the pollution, waste, and other ills are not our fault. They are the fault of the industry, business, science. They are the fault of the politicians,’ This leads to a destructive and potentially deadly apathy.” – Jane Goodall

“All the time I was getting closer to animals and nature, and as a result, closer to myself and more and more in tune with the spiritual power that I felt all around. For those who have experienced the joy of being alone with nature there is really little need for me to say much more; for those who have not, no words of mine can even describe the powerful, almost mystical knowledge of beauty and eternity that come, suddenly, and all unexpected. The beauty was always there, but moments of true awareness were rare. They would come, unannounced; perhaps when I was watching the pale flush preceding dawn; or looking up through the rustling leaves of some giant forest tree into the greens and browns and the black shadows and the occasionally ensured bright fleck of blue sky; or when I stood, as darkness fell, with one hand on the still warm trunk of a tree and looked at the sparkling of an early moon on the never still, softly sighing water of Lake Tanganyika.” – Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall Inspirational Quotes

“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

“We still have a long way to go. But we are moving in the right direction. If only we can overcome cruelty, to human and animal, with love and compassion we shall stand at the threshold of a new era in human moral and spiritual evolution ― and realize, at last, our most unique quality: humanity.” – Jane Goodall

“I became totally absorbed into this forest existence. It was an unparalleled period when aloneness was a way of life; a perfect opportunity, it might seem, for meditating on the meaning of existence and my role in it all.” – Jane Goodall

“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.” – Jane Goodall

“And if we dare to look into those eyes, then we shall feel their suffering in our hearts. More and more people have seen that appeal and felt it in their hearts. All around the world there is an awakening of understanding and compassion, and understanding that reaches out to help the suffering animals in their vanishing homelands. That embraces hungry, sick, and desperate human beings, people who are starving while the fortunate among us have so much more than we need. And if, one by one, we help them, the hurting animals, the desperate humans, then together we shall alleviate so much of the hunger, fear, and pain in the world. Together we can bring change to the world, gradually replacing fear and hatred with compassion and love. Love for all living beings.” – Jane Goodall

“….I understood why those who had lived through war or economic disasters, and who had built for themselves a good life and a high standard of living, were rightly proud to be able to provide for their children those things which they themselves had not had. And why their children, inevitably, took those things for granted. It meant that new values and new expectations had crept into our societies along with new standards of living. Hence the materialistic and often greedy and selfish lifestyle of so many young people in the Western world, especially in the United States.” ― Jane Goodall, Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey

“…it honestly didn’t matter how we humans got to be the way we are, whether evolution or special creation was responsible. What mattered and mattered desperately was our future development. Were we going to go on destroying God’s creation, fighting each other, hurting the other creatures of the His planet?”
― Jane Goodall

“I watched a TV show where the scientist proudly showed how he could kill little mice by making a certain kind of loud noise.” ― Jane Goodall, My Life with the Chimpanzees

“Understanding what chimpanzees are like has made me realize that we humans are not so different from other animals as we used to think. What makes us most different is that we are far more clever than even the cleverest chimp, and we have words. We have a spoken language. We can tell stories about what happened a week or a year or a decade ago. We can plan for the future, and we can discuss things – one person’s idea can grow and change as other people contribute their ideas. Great ideas become greater, problems are solved.” ― Jane Goodall, My Life with the Chimpanzees

“I like to envision the whole world as a jigsaw puzzle… If you look at the whole picture, it is overwhelming and terrifying, but if you work on your little part of the jigsaw and know that people all over the world are working on their little bits, that’s what will give you hope.” ― Jane Goodall

Did you like these Jane Goodall famous quotes?

Jane Goodall has devoted her entire life to animals and nature. As we all know our earth has been impacted by the climate change and pollution so these Jane Goodall quotes will open your eyes toward the nature and the connection between the human and nature. Share it with your animal lover friends.

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