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Portrait of Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall

(1934–2025) Primatologist

321 quotes in 1543 categories

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Jane Goodall was a primatologist, best known for In the shadow of man.

Quick Facts About Jane Goodall

Born: April 3, 1934
Died: October 1, 2025
Profession: Primatologist
Notable works: In the shadow of man

About Jane Goodall

Dame Valerie Jane Morris Goodall was an English primatologist and anthropologist. Regarded as a pioneer in primate ethology, and described by many publications as "the world's preeminent chimpanzee expert", she was best known for more than six decades of field research on the social and family life of wild chimpanzees in the Kasakela chimpanzee community at Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. Beginning in 1960, under the mentorship of the palaeontologist Louis Leakey, Goodall's research demonstrated that chimpanzees share many key traits with humans, such as using tools, having complex emotions, forming lasting social bonds, engaging in organised warfare, and passing on knowledge across generations, which redefined the traditional view that humans are uniquely different from other animals.

Biography source: Wikipedia

Quotes by Jane Goodall · Page 8

I believe that the tragedy [like terror attack] that's caused so much grief and suffering to so many thousands and thousands of…

Action

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Just think of the trust that often exists in soldiers. Within their own unit, you could say they have to trust each…

Animal

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If we start with chimpanzees, they differ from us with the composition of the DNA by only just over one percent. So,…

Biology

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They used to ask: "How will this decision that we make today affect our people in the future?" Now we make decisions…

Asks

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But does that mean that war and violence are inevitable? I would argue not because we have also evolved this amazingly sophisticated…

Arguing

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We're the ones who can make a difference. If we lead lives where we consciously leave the lightest possible ecological footprints, if…

Change the world

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If you look through all the different cultures. Right from the earliest, earliest days with the animistic religions, we have sought to…

Culture

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The part that always shocked me was the inter-community violence among the chimps: the patrols and the vicious attacks on strangers that…

Always

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If everybody on the planet today had the same standard of living as the average European or American, we would need three…

Average

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People say to me so often, 'Jane how can you be so peaceful when everywhere around you people want books signed, people…

Answers

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“Oh, the world needs those standing on the Bridge, For they know how Eternity reaches to earth In the wind that brings…

Blind

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When I was 10 years old, I loved - I loved books, and I used to haunt the secondhand bookshop. And I…

Afford

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Without the heart to ground it and open it to who we really can be as human beings, the brain is a…

Brain

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I just have this absolute belief that humans are moving away from cruelty and destruction towards a time when we can truly…

Absolutes

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I wouldn't even like to begin to define God - I have absolutely no idea. But what I feel, and what touches…

Feel

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Chimps are unbelievably like us - in biological, non-verbal ways. They can be loving and compassionate and yet they have a dark…

Cents

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It's been proven by quite a few studies that plants are good for our psychological development. If you green an area, the…

Crime

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Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutan shave been living for hundreds of thousands of years in their forest,living fantastic lives, never overpopulating, never destroying the…

Chimpanzees

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The chimpanzees taught me a lot about nonverbal communication. The big difference between them and us is that they don't have spoken…

Animal

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There are certain characteristics that define a good chimp mother. She is patient, she is protective but she is not over-protective -…

Affectionate

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Words can enhance experience, but they can also take so much away. We see an insect and at once we abstract certain…

Abandon

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And I thought how sad it was that, for all our sophisticated intellect, for all our noble aspirations, our aggressive behavior was…

Aggressive

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The hardest part of returning to a truly healthy environment may be changing the current totally unsustainable heavy-meat-eating culture of increasing numbers…

Around the world

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People say, "Oh, we ought to fight for animal rights." We fought for human rights, but even if humans have rights, they…

Abuse

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I see that within each human being there are two extremes: there's the loving, the passionate, altruistic side that has evolved with…

Being there

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Chimps can do all sorts of things we thought that only we could do - like tool-making and abstraction and generalisation. They…

Abstraction

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My mother always used to say, 'Well, if you had been born a little girl growing up in Egypt, you would go…

Allah

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Chimpanzees are incredibly intelligent. They can learn more than 400 signs of American Sign Language. They have memories for spatial distribution, like…

Accused

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Chimps are brutal, and it is so deliberate. The males go out and get near the boundary of their territory. And they…

Animal

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I didn't want to become a professor or get tenure or teach or anything. All I wanted to do was get a…

Anything

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The chimpanzee study was - well, it's still going on, and I think it's taught us perhaps more than anything else to…

Animal

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The person who has the most influence on me is my mother. Think of life as a flight where we fly higher…

Bird

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Studying chimps, I came to the conclusion that being evil is something that only humans are capable of. A chimp would never…

Aggression

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As human beings, we can encompass a vague feeling of what the universe is, and all in this funny little brain here…

Brain

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Above all we must realize that each of us makes a difference with our life. Each of us impacts the world around…

Better place

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I became intensely aware of the being-ness of trees. The feel of rough sun-warmed bark of an ancient forest giant, or the…

Ancient

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“We still have a long way to go. But we are moving in the right direction. If only we can overcome cruelty,…

Compassion

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War had always seemed to me to be a purely human behavior. Accounts of warlike behavior date back to the very first…

Accounts

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From my perspective, I absolutely believe in a greater spiritual power, far greater than I am, from which I have derived strength…

Believe

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I feel a desperation to make people see what we are doing to the environment, what a mess we are making of…

Accomplish

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Jane Goodall by topic

Animal (91) Humans (55) People (52) Ifs (37) Animals (37) World (35) Thinking (33) Chimpanzees (32) Life (31) Way (28) Chimps (27) Believe (25) Time (23) Nature (22) Want (19) Science (18) Children (18) Nature of man (17) Habits (17) Environment (17) Differences (16) Behavior (16) Feels (15) Young (14) Love (14)