Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall
Dame Jane Morris Goodall, DBE, formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, is a British primatologist, ethologist, anthropologist, and UN Messenger of Peace. Considered to be the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is best known for her 55-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania. She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots & Shoots program, and she has worked extensively on conservation and animal welfare issues. She has...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth3 April 1934
CityLondon, England
Without the heart to ground it and open it to who we really can be as human beings, the brain is a very dangerous machine. A machine that is saying: we've got to have economic growth; we've got to have unending economic growth, otherwise societies will collapse. And yet there should be something saying: wait a minute, this isn't going to work.
Chimpanzees have given me so much. The long hours spent with them in the forest have enriched my life beyond measure. What I have learned from them has shaped my understanding of human behavior, of our place in nature.
I cannot remember a time when I did not want to go to Africa to study animals.
I am living in the Africa I have always longed for, always felt stirring in my blood.
Chimps act the way they feel unless they are afraid of reprisal if they do so. But that doesn't apply to humans.
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.
Above all we must realize that each of us makes a difference with our life. Each of us impacts the world around us every single day. We have a choice to use the gift of our life to make the world a better place - or not to bother
One thing I had learned from watching chimpanzees with their infants is that having a child should be fun.
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.
What makes us human, I think, is an ability to ask questions, a consequence of our sophisticated spoken language.
Every stage of my life set the scene for the next, and at each point all I had to do was say "yes" and not think too much about the consequences.
Your life matters. You can't live through a day without making an impact on the world. And what's most important is to think about the impact of your actions on the world around you.
I never wanted to be a scientist per se. I wanted to be a naturalist.
We can learn to suppress our feelings for other reasons.