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We have the choice to use the gift of our life to make the world a better place--or not to bother

Jane Goodall

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Jane Goodall
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: April 3
Anthropologist
Environmentalist
Ethologist
Primatologist
University Teacher
Writer
Hampstead Village
Dame Jane Morris Goodall
Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall
Dame Jane Goodall
Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall
Choices
Use
Place
Better
Make
Bother
Life
Inspiring
World
Gift
Choice

More quotes by Jane Goodall

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In a very unscientific statement, I feel that there's been a disconnect between this clever brain and the heart.
Jane Goodall
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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.
Jane Goodall
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A sense of calm came over me. More and more often I found myself thinking, This is where I belong. This is what I came into this world to do.
Jane Goodall
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We could change the world tomorrow if all the millions of people around the world acted the way they believe.
Jane Goodall
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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.
Jane Goodall
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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 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.
Jane Goodall
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My hope for the future is that we learn wisdom again.
Jane Goodall
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Maternal behavior helps when you have to be patient with nonverbal creatures.
Jane Goodall
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You're thinking about putting scientists into small cages and doing research on them. I wish it could happen sometimes.
Jane Goodall
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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.
Jane Goodall
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I believe sharing stories and experiences is the best way to teach people to empathize!
Jane Goodall
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Be assured that our individual actions, collectively, make a huge difference.
Jane Goodall
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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.
Jane Goodall
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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.
Jane Goodall
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I have found that to love and be loved is the most empowering and exhilarating of all human emotions.
Jane Goodall
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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 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.
Jane Goodall
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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.
Jane Goodall
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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.
Jane Goodall
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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 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.
Jane Goodall
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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.
Jane Goodall