3 December 2020 Jane Goodall 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.
3 December 2020 Jane Goodall 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.
3 December 2020 Jane Goodall I thought my life was mapped out. Research, living in the forest, teaching and writing. But in ’86 I went to a conference and realised the chimpanzees were disappearing. I had worldwide recognition and a gift of communication. I had to use them.
3 December 2020 Jane Goodall 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.
3 December 2020 Jane Goodall But does that mean that war and violence are inevitable? I would argue not because we have also evolved this amazingly sophisticated intellect, and we are capable of controlling our innate behavior a lot of the time.
3 December 2020 Jane Goodall War had always seemed to me to be a purely human behavior. Accounts of warlike behavior date back to the very first written records of human history it seemed to be an almost universal characteristic of human groups.
3 December 2020 Jane Goodall When I began in 1960, individuality wasn’t an accepted thing to look for it was about species-specific behaviour. But animal behaviour is not hard science. There’s room for intuition.
3 December 2020 Jane Goodall 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.
3 December 2020 Jane Goodall Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right.
3 December 2020 Jane Goodall I’m always pushing for human responsibility. Given that chimpanzees and many other animals are sentient and sapient, then we should treat them with respect.
