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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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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
Thought
Arrogance
Find
Kingdom
Human
Kingdoms
Humans
Animals
Things
Line
Time
Rest
Lines
Dividing
Animal
Sharp

More quotes by Jane Goodall

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Having respect for animals makes us better humans.
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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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.
Jane Goodall
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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.
Jane Goodall
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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 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.
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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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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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
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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.
Jane Goodall
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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.
Jane Goodall
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Of course we're all programmed genetically to some extent. But the selfish gene thesis doesn't explain everything.
Jane Goodall
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Our brain is almost the same as the chimps', but we have language, we have electronic communications, we've put people on the moon - we are immensely more intelligent. And yet: how come the being with the most extraordinary intellect ever is destroying its only planet?
Jane Goodall
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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.
Jane Goodall
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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
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If we do not do something to help these creatures, we make a mockery of the whole concept of justice.
Jane Goodall
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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 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
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Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don't believe is right.
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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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.
Jane Goodall
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The only possible way to get somebody to change is to reach into their hearts.
Jane Goodall