Jane Goodall > Quotes

“funding for Dian Fossey to study mountain gorillas and Biruté Galdikas to study orangutans. The three women later became known as “the Trimates.”
― Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for an Endangered Planet

“Many years ago, in the spring of 1974, I visited the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. There were not many people around, and it was quiet and still inside. I gazed in silent awe at the great Rose Window, glowing in the morning sun. All at once the cathedral was filled with a huge volume of sound: an organ playing magnificently for a wedding taking place in a distant corner. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. I had always loved the opening theme; but in the cathedral, filling the entire vastness, it seemed to enter and possess my whole self. It was as though the music itself was alive.”
― Jane Goodall, Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey

“that she suddenly understood how a sense of compassion for the victims of oppression can lead to a hatred of the oppressor—and there you have a recipe for reciprocal violence and internecine war like in Rwanda and Burundi.”
― Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times

“we now know, for all fynbos species. It is the heating of the soil as the fire sweeps across the ground that breaks seed dormancy.”
― Jane Goodall, Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder from the World of Plants

“Phragmipedium kovachii. It is a stunningly beautiful orchid from the Amazon rain forest in northeast Peru, with a blue-purple flower that can have a horizontal spread of up to nine and a half inches.”
― Jane Goodall, Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder from the World of Plants

“There are over seven billion of us today,”
― Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times

“She called this network the Wood Wide Web because the trees of a forest are all connected under the ground. And that through this network, trees can receive information about their kinship, their health, and their needs.”
― Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times

“Archbishop Tutu once explained to me that suffering can either embitter us or ennoble us, and it tends to ennoble us if we are able to make meaning out of our suffering and use it for the benefit of others.”
― Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times

“facing our grief is essential to combatting and overcoming our despair and powerlessness. The elders taught her that grief is not something to avoid or to be afraid of. And that if we come together and share our sadness, it can be healing.” “I absolutely agree,” Jane said. “It’s really important for us to confront our grief and get over our feelings of helplessness and hopelessness—our very survival”
― Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times

“That’s wonderful, but doesn’t it feel like a drop in the ocean, given the overwhelming autocracy or tyranny that people are facing around the world?”
“But millions of drops actually make the ocean.”
I smiled. Hope, checkmate.”
― Jane Goodall

“One of the most important things about roots is that they hold the soil in place.”
― Jane Goodall, Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder from the World of Plants

“And don't forget that all the animals I've been talking about are individuals with personalities. Many--and especially pigs--are highly intelligent, and each one knows fear, misery, and feels pain.”
― Jane Goodall

“Chimpanzees and the other great apes can learn four hundred or more words of American Sign”
― Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times

“eco-anxiety.”
― Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times

“using our powerful intellect to recognize the consequences of our actions and to think of the well-being of the whole.”
― Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times

“and some degree of social justice, the generous and peaceful aspects of our nature are likely to prevail; while in a society of racial discrimination and economic injustice, violence will thrive.”
― Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times

“the people understand that protecting the forest is not just for wildlife but for their own future, and so they have become our partners in conservation”
― Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times

“around four main reasons for hope: the amazing human intellect, the resilience of nature, the power of youth, and the indomitable human spirit.”
― Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times

“And give thanks that we live in such a wonderful, magical, and endlessly fascinating kingdom. The kingdom of the plants.”
― Jane Goodall, Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder from the World of Plants

“It’s been a difficult few months,” I admitted.
“You don’t really get over it. It is such a great loss,” Jane said. “I guess the depth of our grief is a reminder of the depth of our love.”
― Jane Goodall

“I told Jane I had a very important role model in my life who embodied that indomitable spirit: my grandfather. “He lost his leg as a boy,” I said. “And even with a wooden leg he became a ballroom dancer and competitive tennis player! He became a neurosurgeon and performed a pioneering separation of conjoined twins, which he had been told was impossible. During World War Two, he would show the recent amputees how to live with a prosthetic and assure them that they could have a full life. He had a motto: ‘The difficult is hard, the impossible just a little harder.”
― Jane Goodall

“Yes,” Jane said. “Hope does not deny all the difficulty and all the danger that exists, but it is not stopped by them. There is a lot of darkness, but our actions create the light.”
― Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times

“guess the depth of our grief is a reminder of the depth of our love.”
― Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times

“It was from a species long thought to be extinct—a species known only from the fossil record, a species that turned out to have survived for two hundred million years. Those trees, who came to be known as Wollemi pines, had been in that canyon, getting on with their lives, through seventeen Ice Ages!”
― Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times

“So it seems we can shift our perspective to see the light and also to work to create more of it.”
― Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times

“Attacks by other chimpanzees are the second most frequent cause of death at Gombe, after disease. Through”
― Jane Goodall, Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe

“deaths of despair escalating in terrifying ways as people struggled with the dislocation and isolation that the pandemic had caused.”
― Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times

“I love dogs, not chimps. Some chimps are nice, and some are horrid. I don't actually think of them as animals any more than I think of us as animals, although both of us are.”
― Jane Goodall

“China has banned the eating of wild animals, and there is hope that the use of wild animal parts for medicine will also come to an end.”
― Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times

“The Survivor Tree—the tree who was rescued after she was crushed and wounded on 9/11.”
― Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times