Background Image

...

My Favorite Animals Are Dogs.

-Jane Goodall

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

My Favorite Animals Are

Jane Goodall

...

My Favorite Animals Are Dogs.

Views: 9

Topic

More From Jane Goodall

It Is These Undeniable Qualities Of Human Love And Compassion And Self-sacrifice That Give Me Hope For The Future. 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.

I'm Highly Political. I Spend An Awful Lot Of Time In The U.s. Trying To Influence Decision-makers. But I Don't Feel In Tune With British Politics.

As Thy Days, So Shall Thy Strength Be.

Cumulatively Small Decisions, Choices, Actions, Make A Very Big Difference.

I Had A Wonderful Teacher About Animal Behavior - My Dog Rusty. He Taught Me That Animals Have Personalities, Minds, And Feelings.

The Soul Of Money Is An Inspired And Utterly Fascinating Book. It Will Change The Way You Think About Money. ... It Is A Book For Everyone Who Would Like To Make The World A Better Place.

I Think Anything Is Better Than War. The Extent To Which One Can Negotiate With Fanatics, I Have No Idea. I Don't Know.

We Have The Choice To Use The Gift Of Our Life To Make The World A Better Place--or Not To Bother

Nothing Is More Precious Than Your Baby.

I've Got Different Ideas Of Complete Happiness. But One Is Being By Myself Out In A Forest, Completely Happy. Another Is Walking With A Dog In Some Nice Place. And Three Is Sitting Around Preferably A Fire, But Not Necessarily, And Drinking Red Wine With Friends And Telling Stories.

Every Individual Can Make A Difference Every Day By Making Conscious Choices.

Making A Difference

It's Easy To Become Hopeless. So People Must Have Hope: The Human Brain, The Resilience Of Nature, The Energy Of Young People And The Sort Of Inspiration That You See From So Many Hundreds Of People Who Tackle Tasks That Are Impossible And Never Give Up And Succeed.

I Feel A Desperation To Make People See What We Are Doing To The Environment, What A Mess We Are Making Of Our World. At This Point, The More People I Reach, The More I Accomplish. ... I Miss Gombe And My Wonderful Years In The Forest But If I Were To Go Back To That, I Wouldn't Feel I Was Doing What I Should Be Doing.

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.

Surely It Should Be A Matter Of Moral Responsibility That We Humans, Different From Other Animals Mainly By Virtue Of Our More Highly Developed Intellect And, With It, Our Greater Capacity For Understanding And Compassion, Ensure That Medical Progress Slowly Detaches Its Roots From The Manure Of Non-human Animal Suffering And Despair.

Only If We Understand, Can We Care. Only If We Care, We Will Help. Only If We Help, We Shall Be Saved.

There Are An Awful Lot Of Scientists Today Who Believe That Before Very Long We Shall Have Unraveled All The Secrets Of The Universe. There Will Be No Puzzles Anymore. To Me, It'd Be Really, Really Tragic Because I Think One Of The Most Exciting Things Is This Feeling Of Mystery, Feeling Of Awe, The Feeling Of Looking At A Little Live Thing And Being Amazed By It And How It Has Emerged Through These Hundreds Of Years Of Evolution And There It Is And It Is Perfect And Why.

Being Evil Is Something That Only Humans Are Capable Of.

My Mission Is To Create A World Where We Can Live In Harmony With Nature.

If You Do Microcredit With Men, They Tend To Quickly Drink It. They Don't Pay You Back.

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.

Become As Knowledgeable As Possible.

There Would Be Very Little Point In My Exhausting Myself And Other Conservationists Themselves In Trying To Protect Animals And Habitats If We Weren't At The Same Time Raising Young People To Be Better Stewards.

Chimps Are Very Quick To Have A Sudden Fight Or Aggressive Episode, But They're Equally As Good At Reconciliation.

Certainly, If You Look At Human Behavior Around The World, You Have To Admit That We Can Be Very Aggressive.

When I Look Back Over My Life It's Almost As If There Was A Plan Laid Out For Me - From The Little Girl Who Was So Passionate About Animals Who Longed To Go To Africa And Whose Family Couldn't Afford To Put Her Through College. Everyone Laughed At My Dreams. I Was Supposed To Be A Secretary In Bournemouth.

If You Really Want Something, And Really Work Hard, And Take Advantage Of Opportunities, And Never Give Up, You Will Find A Way.. Follow Your Dreams.

If Plants Could Be Credited With Reasoning Powers, We Would Marvel At The Imaginative Ways They Bribe Or Ensnare Other Creatures To Carry Out Their Wishes.

My Family Has Very Strong Women. My Mother Never Laughed At My Dream Of Africa, Even Though Everyone Else Did Because We Didn't Have Any Money, Because Africa Was The 'dark Continent', And Because I Was A Girl.

I Believe That The Tragedy [like Terror Attack] That's Caused So Much Grief And Suffering To So Many Thousands And Thousands Of People Has Also Served As A Call To Action, Because Many People Now Are Re-examining Their Own Value Systems, And The Churches, Temples, Mosques And Cathedrals Are Packed To Overflowing For The First Time In Years.

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.

I Have Found That To Love And Be Loved Is The Most Empowering And Exhilarating Of All Human Emotions.

Chimps Are Brutal, And It Is So Deliberate. The Males Go Out And Get Near The Boundary Of Their Territory. And They Walk Very Silently Trying Hard Not To Make Any Noise. They Will Climb Into A Tree And Stare Out Over Hostile Territory For Hours. They Are Waiting For The Right Opportunity. And Then They Attack.

Realize That Change - Whilst We Want It To Happen Fast - Is Usually The Result Of A Great Deal Of Work, And Often Comes As A Result Of A Series Of Compromises (so Long As We Do Not Compromise Our Values).

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 Ever Describe The Powerful, Almost Mystical Knowledge Of Beauty And Eternity That Come, Suddenly, And All Unexpected.

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.

Primates Are Very Territorial. It Is In Their Nature To Protect Their Food Resources As Well As Their Females And Young.

I Don't Spend That Much Time Being Introspective, Believe It Or Not. All I Know Is That I Grew Up Not Questioning God Because That's How You Are. God Was There Like The Birds And The Wind.

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.

And Always I Have This Feeling--which May Not Be True At All--that I Am Being Used As A Messenger.

Every Single Day, We Could Be In A Motorcar Accident, So, We Have To Carry On With Our Lives, And Not Imagine Terror Around Every Corner.

Well, In Some Ways We're Not Successful At All. We're Destroying Our Home. That's Not A Bit Successful.

I Never Wanted To Give Up. I Thought I Might Have To. Especially At The Beginning When Chimpanzees Had Never Seen A White Person Before.they Gave One Look At Me And Ran Away! They Were Scared, But Eventually I Got Their Trust.

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.

Especially Females And The Younger Ones Like To Be With Somebody Who Is Wise.

Language Allows Us To Talk About The Past And Plan The Future. We Can Teach Children About Things That Are Not Present. And Above All, We Can Bring People With Different Backgrounds And Different Knowledge Together To Discuss Our Problems. This Actually Gives Me Hope. I Still Think We Are Smart Enough To Not Destroy Planet Earth, Our Only Home.

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.

Empathy Is Really Important.. Only When Our Clever Brain And Our Human Heart Work Together In Harmony Can We Achieve Our Full Potential.

Chimpanzees Can Be Quite Political.

My Hope For The Future Is That We Learn Wisdom Again.

Hope For The Future

If You Work Hard And Be Persistent, You Will Achieve Whatever You Want To Do.

You're Thinking About Putting Scientists Into Small Cages And Doing Research On Them. I Wish It Could Happen Sometimes.

I Didn't Want To Become A Professor Or Get Tenure Or Teach Or Anything. All I Wanted To Do Was Get A Degree Because Louis Leakey Said I Needed One, Which Was Right, And Once I Succeeded I Could Get Back To The Field.

The Refugees Flee To Protect Their Families From Violence; The Europeans, On The Other Hand, Fear For Their Jobs That They Need To Feed Their Families.

It's Not Africa That Is Destroying The African Rainforest, It's Selling Concessions To Timber Companies That Are Not African, They Are From The Developed World - Japan, America, Germany, Britain.

We Learn The Social Norms Of Our Society And Modify Our Behaviour Accordingly.

It Was Because The Chimps Are So Eye-catching, So Like Us And Teach Us So Much That My Work Was Recognised Worldwide.

If Harsher Laws Are Put In Place, Less Will Dare To Break Them.

I've Learned That If You Want People To Join In Any Kind Of Conservation Effort, You Have To Help Them To Care With Their Hearts, Not Just Their Heads.

I Wouldn't Even Like To Begin To Define God - I Have Absolutely No Idea. But What I Feel, And What Touches Me, Is A Great Spiritual Power, Which I Don't Even Want To Name. If I Had To, I Would Say God, Because I Don't Know Any Other.

Louis [leakey] Was Anxious To Initiate A Scientific Study Of These Chimpanzees. It Would Be Difficult, He Emphasized, For Nothing Was Known; There Were No Guidelines For Such A Field Study; And The Habitat Was Remote And Rugged. Dangerous Wild Animals Would Be Living There, And Chimpanzees Themselves Were Considered At Least Four Times Stronger Than Humans. I Remember Wondering What Kind Of Scientist He Would Find For Such A Herculean Task.

However Much You Know Giraffes, To See One In The Wild For The First Time Feels Prehistoric.

I Had Never Been Able To Believe That God Would Give Us Poor Frail Humans Only One Chance At Making It -- That We Would Be Assigned To Some Kind Of Hell Because We Failed During One Experience Of Mortal Life. ... So The Concepts Of Karma And Reincarnation Made Logical Sense To Me.

Even In Chimps There Is True Altruistic Behaviour; Behaviour That Doesn't Fit Into The Sociobiological Model That Says You Either Help A Close Relative And Thereby Your Own Genes, Or You Help Somebody Else Now In Return For Their Help In The Future. When A Very High-ranking Male Chimpanzee Rescues A Little Orphan, Saving His Life, That Kind Of Explanation Doesn't Work.

I Became Intensely Aware Of The Being-ness Of Trees. The Feel Of Rough Sun-warmed Bark Of An Ancient Forest Giant, Or The Cool, Smooth Skin Of A Young And Eager Sapling, Gave Me A Strange, Intuitive Sense Of The Sap As It Was Sucked Up By Unseen Roots And Drawn Up To The Very Tips Of The Branches, High Overhead.

Women Tend To Be More Intuitive, Or To Admit To Being Intuitive, And Maybe The Hard Science Approach Isn't So Attractive. The Way That Science Is Taught Is Very Cold. I Would Never Have Become A Scientist If I Had Been Taught Like That.

I Have Never Had An Animal That Didn't Have A Personality, One Differing From Another.

Maternal Behavior Helps When You Have To Be Patient With Nonverbal Creatures.

I Sometimes Wonder How Some People Can Live With Themselves In Some Of The Big Companies Today. So Many Far-reaching Decisions Are Based On How They Will Affect The Next Shareholders' Meeting.

Chimpanzees Are Incredibly Intelligent. They Can Learn More Than 400 Signs Of American Sign Language. They Have Memories For Spatial Distribution, Like Numbers On A Tv Screen, Way Better Than Ours. You Come Onto The Emotions: Happiness, Sadness, Fear, And Despair - All The Things For Which I Was Accused Of Being Anthropomorphic When I Ascribed Them To Chimpanzees.

Every Individual Matters. Every Individual Has A Role To Play. Every Individual Makes A Difference.

I Just Have This Absolute Belief That Humans Are Moving Away From Cruelty And Destruction Towards A Time When We Can Truly Live In Harmony With Nature. When We Understand That There Is A Spiritual Power Around Us From Which We Can Draw Strength. That Is Where I Believe Human Destiny Ultimately Is Taking Us. I Just Hope We Have Time.

We Seem To Have Lost The Wisdom Of The Indigenous People, Which Dictated That In Any Major Decision, The First Consideration Was 'how Will This Decision We're Making Today Affect Our People In The Future? These Days, Decisions Are Made Based On The Bottom Line.

When You Borrow You Plan To Pay Back. We're Stealing From Our Children - So Many People Have No Intention Of Paying Back.

If We Kill Off The Wild, Then We Are Killing A Part Of Our Souls.

Certainly It's Very Often True That Women Tend To Be A Bit Quieter And More Prepared To Sit There And Let The Animal Tell You Things.

I Was The Sort Of Person Who Didn't Care About Hairdressing And Clothes And Parties And Boyfriends. I Really Wanted To Be In The Wild.

I Don't Even Think Of Chimps As Animals. I Think Of Them As Beings.

Change Happens By Listening And Then Starting A Dialogue With The People Who Are Doing Something You Don't Believe Is Right.

If We Could Just Stop Building Up Armies And Things Like That, We Would Have All The Money We Need For Wildlife And Poverty.

I Think The Most Important Thing To Do Is To Be Willing To Listen, Willing To Care, And Willing To Admit Mistakes And Change Your Ways For The Better!

Chimps Are Far Too Much Human To Be My Favorite Animal.

I Want To Change Awareness.

People Say, "oh, We Ought To Fight For Animal Rights." We Fought For Human Rights, But Even If Humans Have Rights, They Can Still Be Horribly Abused And Are Every Day. You Don't Have To Go To Some Far Off Land, Far Away Place; We Have A Lot Of Child Abuse In Our Own Society.

I Started As - Well, I Wanted To Be Poet Laureate. And I Wanted To Be A Naturalist. That's How I Began. I Didn't Have Any Desire To Go And Be A Scientist. Louis Leakey Channeled Me There. I'm Delighted He Did. I Love Science. I Love Analyzing And Making Sense Of All These Observations. So, It Was The Perfect Rounding Off Of Who I Was Into Who I Am.

Today It Is Generally Accepted That Although The Earliest Humans Probably Ate Some Meat, It Was Unlikely To Have Played A Major Role In Their Diet. Plants Would Have Been A Much More Important Source Of Food.

I Believe That We Have More Capability Than Any Other Creature To Control Our Biological Inheritance - And We Do So Most Of The Time.

Science Demands Objective Factual Evidence - Proof; Spiritual Experience Is Subjective And Leads To Faith.

When I Go Back To Gombe It's To Be In That Timeless World Where It's Soft And Where Life Is Entwined And You Actually See The Pattern Of Nature. I Always Feel This Great Spiritual Power Which I Believe Is Around.

Without The Support Of Local People, You Might As Well Give Up Because You Can Make All The Noise You Like, You Can Demarcate A National Park, But If The People Outside Want To Go Creeping Into A Forest You Really Can't Stop Them. They've Got To Get A Benefit.

I Think The Most Important Thing Is To Keep Active, And To Hope That Your Mind Stays Active.

Lasting Change Is A Series Of Compromises. And Compromise Is All Right, As Long Your Values Don't Change.

There Are Good Mothers And Bad Ones, But Most Of Them Are Somewhere In-between.

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.

It's Been Proven By Quite A Few Studies That Plants Are Good For Our Psychological Development. If You Green An Area, The Rate Of Crime Goes Down. Torture Victims Begin To Recover When They Spend Time Outside In A Garden With Flowers. So We Need Them, In Some Deep Psychological Sense, Which I Don't Suppose Anybody Really Understands Yet.

The More We Spread The Word, The Further It Will Go And More It Will Change!

Chimps Taught Us We're Not Separated From The Animal Kingdom, We're A Part Of It.

Let Us Develop Respect For All Living Things. Let Us Try To Replace Violence And Intolerance With Understanding And Compassion. And Love.

Whales, Like Elephants, Are So Social And Intelligent. This Hurts Me To Think Of Them Being Transported, Put In Noisy Airplanes, And Brought To A Horrible Concrete Pen When They're Supposed To Be Out In The Sea.

Of Course We're All Programmed Genetically To Some Extent. But The "selfish Gene" Thesis Doesn't Explain Everything.

It Would Be Absolutely Useless For Any Of Us To Work To Save Wildlife Without Working To Educate The Next Generation Of Conservationists.

We Are Beginning To Learn That Each Animal Has A Life And A Place And A Role In This World. If We Place Compassion And Care In The Middle Of All Our Dealings With The Animal World And Honor And Respect Their Lives, Our Attitudes Will Change.

There Are Many People Out There (me Being One Of Them) Who Can Vouch That Animals Have Feelings; They Feel Compassion And Love, As Well As Pain!

If You Catch Somebody Doing Something Wrong, He Will Just Cringe Away And Curl Up. He Will Not Listen Anymore. Instead, He Will Think Of How He Can Counterattack.

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.

I Was Even Accused Of Teaching The Chimps How To Fish For Termites Which I Mean That Would Have Been Such A Brilliant Coup.

We Are Always Talking About How We Can Get More Environmental And Humanitarian Education. It Is About Listening To The Voice Of Young People - How They Feel, And What Would Be Most Meaningful For Them.

The Tree I Had In The Garden As A Child, My Beech Tree, I Used To Climb Up There And Spend Hours. I Took My Homework Up There, My Books, I Went Up There If I Was Sad, And It Just Felt Very Good To Be Up There Among The Green Leaves And The Birds And The Sky.

Having Respect For Animals Makes Us Better Humans.

It May Sound Trite, But Young People Really Are The Future.

If We Allow The Destruction Of The Environment, We Can See The Terrorists Have Utterly Won, And Are Destroying The Future Of Our Children And Grandchildren. We Must Not Let That Happen.

It's Up To Us To Save The World For Tomorrow: It's Up To You And Me.

I Believe That Accurate Knowledge Is Very, Very Important, But Find That Out In Free Time. Don't Let It Take Over Every Hour Of The Day. Perhaps Most Important, Talk About It.

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.

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.

I Am Living In The Africa I Have Always Longed For, Always Felt Stirring In My Blood.

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.

Is It Not Possible That The Chimpanzees Are Responding To Some Feeling Like Awe? A Feeling Generated By The Mystery Of Water; Water That Seems Alive, Always Rushing Past Yet Never Going, Always The Same Yet Ever Different. Was It Perhaps Similar Feelings Of Awe That Gave Rise To The First Animistic Religions, The Worship Of The Elements And The Mysteries Of Nature Over Which There Was No Control? Only When Our Prehistoric Ancestors Developed Language Would It Have Been Possible To Discuss Such Internal Feelings And Create A Shared Religion.

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.

If You Look Through All The Different Cultures. Right From The Earliest, Earliest Days With The Animistic Religions, We Have Sought To Have Some Kind Of Explanation For Our Life, For Our Being, That Is Outside Of Our Humanity.

Be Assured That Our Individual Actions, Collectively, Make A Huge Difference.

A Book Came Out Recently Written By Scientists And Environmentalists That Made Me So Angry. It Said The Only Thing We Have To Worry About Is Big Industry. Each Individual Who Tries To Make His Or Her Own Environment Better Is Useless. I Find This Criminal, Because Then You Have A Billion People All Saying, It Doesn't Matter What I Do Because I'm Just One Person. But If You Turn That Around And A Billion People Say, What I Do Does Make A Difference, Then It Will Make A Difference.

Studying Chimps, I Came To The Conclusion That Being Evil Is Something That Only Humans Are Capable Of. A Chimp Would Never Plan To Pull Another's Nails Out. The Chimps' Way Of Aggression Is Quick And Brutal. I Compare Them To Gang Attacks.

The Voice Of The Natural World Would Be, "could You Please Give Us Space And Leave Us Alone To Get Along With Our Own Lives And Our Own Ways, Because We Actually Know Much Better How To Do It Then When You Start Interfering."

I Had A Wonderful Teacher About Animal Behavior.

The Only Possible Way To Get Somebody To Change Is To Reach Into Their Hearts.

You Better Not Mess With Chimps. They Are Much Stronger Than Humans.

My Favorite Animals Are Dogs.

I Like Some Animals More Than Some People, Some People More Than Some Animals.

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.

Chimps Act The Way They Feel Unless They Are Afraid Of Reprisal If They Do So. But That Doesn't Apply To Humans.

We Have Turned Away From The Natural World. Instead, It's All About Money And Power.

Money And Power

Chimpanzees, Gorillas, Orangutan Shave 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.

When You Meet These Outstanding Leaders Who Have Been Through A Programme That Empowers Them To Take Positive Action, To Make Things Better For People, For Animals And For The Environment - When You Watch Them Interact And They Start Brainstorming, You Realise You Can Relax, Because They Have Got It Right. They Understand That There's More To This Life Than Just Money.

When I Was A Child, The African Forest Sounded Like A Dream To Me, Because It Was Full Of Animals And It Was Wild.

Every Individual Matters And Has A Role To Play In This Life On Earth.

Chimps Are Unbelievably Like Us - In Biological, Non-verbal Ways. They Can Be Loving And Compassionate And Yet They Have A Dark Side... 98 Per Cent Of Our Dna Is The Same. The Difference Is That We Have Developed Language - We Can Teach About Things That Aren't There, Plan For The Future, Discuss, Share Ideas

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.

Farm Animals Feel Pleasure And Sadness, Excitement And Resentment, Depression, Fear, And Pain. They Are Far More Aware And Intelligent Than We Ever Imagined...they Are Individuals In Their Own Right.

In Tanzania, The Chimps Are Isolated In A Very Tiny Patch Of Forest. I Flew Over It 13 Years Ago And Realized That, Basically, All The Trees Had Gone, That People All Around The Park Are Struggling To Survive. It Became Very Clear That There Was No Way To Protect The Chimps While The People Were In This Dire Circumstance.

At Some Point, My Body Will Collapse. But I Hope That My Brain Will Still Be Working So That I Can Carry On With Writing.

We Have Language And They Do Not. Chimps Communicate By Embracing, Patting, Looking - All These Things. And They Have Lots Of Sounds. But They Cannot Sit And Discuss. They Cannot Teach About Things That Are Not Present, As Far As We Know.

I Had This Wonderful, Supportive Mother Who Didn't Get Mad Because Of All The Earth Mucking Up My Bed. She Just Said They'd Die - They Needed The Earth.

Animals Were My Passion From Even Before I Could Speak Apparently. When I Was About 10, 11 I Fell In Love With Tarzan.

It's Not A Pretty Picture, But There Are Reasons For Hope.

We're The Ones Who Can Make A Difference. If We Lead Lives Where We Consciously Leave The Lightest Possible Ecological Footprints, If We Buy The Things That Are Ethical For Us To Buy And Don't Buy The Things That Are Not, We Can Change The World Overnight.

Making A Difference

People Don't Believe That Their Actions Really And Truly Are Going To Make A Difference. But Kids Get It. They Know. And They Get All Excited About The Difference They're Making.

I Don't Think Anybody Has The Right To A Huge Family. There's Already More People On The Planet Than Our Natural Resources Can Even Support, And If Everybody Were To Have A High Standard Of Living, We Need Three Or Four Or Five New Planets To Provide The Resources. And This Cannot Be, So Something Has To Change.

The Greatest Danger To Our Future Is Apathy.

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 Think We Must Cling To The Hope That We Can See In The Great Heroism, The Bravery Of The Firemen And Policemen, And The Outpouring Of Caring And Concern That Has Come Pouring In From Around The World.

They Used To Ask: "how Will This Decision That We Make Today Affect Our People In The Future?" Now We Make Decisions Based On: "how Does It Affect Me, Now? How Does It Affect The Next Shareholders Meeting, Three Months Ahead? How Does It Affect My Next Political Campaign?"

My Mother Always Taught Us That If People Don't Agree With You, The Important Thing Is To Listen To Them. But If You've Listened To Them Carefully And You Still Think That You're Right, Then You Must Have The Courage Of Your Convictions.

Anyone Who Tries To Improve The Lives Of Animals Invariably Comes In For Criticism From Those Who Believe Such Efforts Are Misplaced In A World Of Suffering Humanity.

We Find Animals Doing Things That We, In Our Arrogance, Used To Think Was "just Human".

Some People Say, Therefore, That Violence And War Are Inevitable. I Say Rubbish: Our Brains Are Fully Capable Of Controlling Instinctive Behavior.

To Reconnect With Nature Is Key If We Want To Save The Planet.

I Think We're Still In A Muddle With Our Language, Because Once You Get Words And A Spoken Language It Gets Harder To Communicate.

The Least I Can Do Is Speak Out For Those Who Cannot Speak For Themselves.

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.

I Do Not Want To Discuss Evolution In Such Depth, However, Only Touch On It From My Own Perspective: From The Moment When I Stood On The Serengeti Plains Holding The Fossilized Bones Of Ancient Creatures In My Hands To The Moment When, Staring Into The Eyes Of A Chimpanzee, I Saw A Thinking, Reasoning Personality Looking Back. You May Not Believe In Evolution, And That Is 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.

You Aren't Going To Save The World On Your Own. But You Might Inspire A Generation Of Kids To Save It For All Of Us. You Would Be Amazed At What Inspired Children Can Do.

So Long As We Continued To Attach More Importance To Our Own Narrow Group Membership Than To The 'global Village' We Would Propagate Prejudice And Ignorance. There Was Absolutely No Harm In Being Part Of A Small Group - Indeed, With Our Hunter-gatherer Band Mentality It Gave Comfort, Provided Us With An Inner Circle Of Friends Who Could Be Utterly Trusted, Who Were Absolutely Reliable. It Helped Give Us Peace Of Mind. The Danger Came Only From Drawing That Sharp Line, Digging That Ditch, Laying That Minefield, Between Our Own Group And Any Other Group That Thought Differently.

If We Start With Chimpanzees, They Differ From Us With The Composition Of The Dna By Only Just Over One Percent. So, As Far As Genetics Go, We're Almost Identical. The Composition Of The Blood, The Immune System, The Structure Of The Brain - Almost Identical.

The Person Who Has The Most Influence On Me Is My Mother. Think Of Life As A Flight Where We Fly Higher And Higher. If I Were A Bird That Needs Feathers To Fly Higher, I Would Regard My Mother As My Strongest Feather.

Even Chimps Understand The Concept - If A Troop Of Chimps Enters A Fruit Tree, They Will Only Pick The Fruits That Are Ripe And Leave The Others Growing. That Is Sustainability.

If You Educate Women, Family Size Tends To Go Down.

Researchers Find It Very Necessary To Keep Blinkers On. They Don't Want To Admit That The Animals They Are Working With Have Feelings. They Don't Want To Admit That They Might Have Minds And Personalities Because That Would Make It Quite Difficult For Them To Do What They Do; So We Find That Within The Lab Communities There Is A Very Strong Resistance Among The Researchers To Admitting That Animals Have Minds, Personalities And Feelings.

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.

The Chimps' Way Of Aggression Is Quick And Brutal. I Compare Them To Gang Attacks.

I Love To Write - It Is A Great Source Of Reflection, Especially As I Continue To Meet Many New Inspiring People.

I Had Been Told From School Onwards That The Best Definition Of A Human Being Was Man The Tool-maker - Yet I Had Just Watched A Chimp Tool-maker In Action. I Remember That Day As Vividly As If It Was Yesterday.

What Makes Us Human, I Think, Is An Ability To Ask Questions, A Consequence Of Our Sophisticated Spoken Language.

What You Do Makes A Difference, And You Have To Decide What Kind Of Difference You Want To Make.

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.

People Say To Me So Often, 'jane How Can You Be So Peaceful When Everywhere Around You People Want Books Signed, People Are Asking These Questions And Yet You Seem Peaceful,' And I Always Answer That It Is The Peace Of The Forest That I Carry Inside.

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.

Certainly The First True Humans Were Unique By Virtue Of Their Large Brains. It Was Because The Human Brain Is So Large When Compared With That Of A Chimpanzee That Paleontologists For Years Hunted For A Half-ape, Half-human Skeleton That Would Provide A Fossil Link Between The Human And The Ape.

A Chimp Would Never Plan To Pull Another's Nails Out.

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.

Lasting Change Is A Series Of Compromises.

There Isn't A Sharp Line Dividing Humans From The Rest Of The Animal Kingdom. All The Time, We Find Animals Doing Things That, In Our Arrogance, We Thought Were Just Human.

I Don't Care Two Hoots About Civilization. I Want To Wander In The Wild.

I Still Think We Are Smart Enough To Not Destroy Planet Earth, Our Only Home.

If You Look Into Their [chimpanzees] Eyes, You Know You're Looking Into A Thinking Mind. They Teach Us That We Are Not The Only Beings With Personalities, Minds Capable Of Rational Thought, Altruism And A Sense Of Humor. That Leads To New Respect For Other Animals, Respect For The Environment And Respect For All Life.

It's Not That Humans And Non-humans Are Identical... But The Lack Of Understanding That Led To The Slave Trade Is The Same Lack Of Understanding Many People Have About Animals Today. When Slaves Were Brought Over From Africa, Many People Believed They Were Not Humans, That They Didn't Have Feelings. Many People Believe That Primates And Other Animals Don't Have Feelings, Too, But They Do.

Even When It Comes To Things Like Wars Over Oil, Which May Seem Like A Whole Different Ball Game, There Are Still Comparisons One Can Draw: Chimps Fight For Their Territory; They Fight For The Resources Within That Territory, So It Does Relate In A Way.

If A Chimp Who Has Been Abused Horribly By Humans Can Help A Human Friend In A Time Of Need, How Much More Should We Help The Animals - And Other People For That Matter - In Their Time Of Need?

Some Humans Are Mathematicians-others Aren't.

In A Very Unscientific Statement, I Feel That There's Been A Disconnect Between This Clever Brain And The Heart.

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.

There Are Many Animal-welfare Groups That Sometimes Seem To Forget That Human Beings Are Animals Too, That We Need To Include Them In Our Sphere Of Compassion.

Successful Actors And Actresses Have To Get Themselves Into Their Roles Before Acting. Therefore, You Need To Really Care About What You Are Saying.

Every Individual Can Make A Difference ... If We Continue To Leave Decision Making To The So-called Decision Makers, Things Will Never Change.

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.

Hundreds And Thousands Of Young People Around The World Can Break Through And Can Make This A Better World For All Living Things. Once Young People Know The Problems And Are Empowered To Act, They Have Great Power To Impact The World.

It's The Bond Between Mother And Child, Which Is Really For Us And For Chimps And Other Primates, The Root Of All The Expressions Of Social Behavior.

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.

There Is A Lot Of Corruption All Over The World And Not Only When It Comes To Illegal Wildlife Trade! There Are A Few Ways To Ensure This Stops: If There Are No Customers, There Will Be No Trade.

I Urge You To Read Eternal Treblinka And Think Deeply About Its Important Message.

Trending Author

Michel Hazanavicius

Category