Young people, when informed and empowered, when they realize that what they do truly makes a difference, can indeed change the world.
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.
I think the most important thing is to keep active and to hope that your mind stays active.
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.
Only when our clever brain and our human heart work together in harmony can we achieve our true potential.
It actually doesn’t take much to be considered a difficult woman. That’s why there are so many of us.” Jane Goodall.
Some people say... that violence and war are inevitable. I say rubbish: Our brains are fully capable of controlling instinctive behavior. We’re not very good at it though, are we?
So, let us move forward with faith in ourselves, in our intelligence, in our indomitable spirit. Let us develop respect for all living things. Let us try to replace violence and intolerance with understanding and compassion and love.
How healing it was to be back at Gombe again, and by myself with the chimpanzees and their forest. I had left the busy, materialistic world so full of greed and selfishness and, for a little while, could feel myself, as in the early days, a part of nature. I felt very much in tune with the chimpanzees, for I was spending time with them not to observe, but simple because I needed their company, undemanding and free of pity.
If I were a bird that needs feathers to fly higher, my mother would be my strongest feather. She was extremely supportive. When I was one and a half, I took a whole handful of earthworms to bed with me. My mother said very quietly, “Jane, they will die if they leave the earth.” And so, together, we put them back into the garden.
Trees are living beings. And they have their own personalities... There are the young, eager saplings, all striving with each other... If you put your cheek against one of those, you almost sense the sap rising and the energy.
I do have hope. Nature is enormously resilient, humans are vastly intelligent, the energy and enthusiasm that can be kindled among young people seems without limit, and he human spirit is indomitable. But if we want life, we will have to stop depending on someone else to save the world. It is up to us-you and me, all of us. Myself, I have placed my faith in the children.
I well remember writing to Louis about my first observations, describing how David Graybeard not only used bits of straw to fish for termites but actually stripped leaves from a stem and thus made a tool. And I remember too receiving the now oft-quoted telegram he sent in response to my letter: “Now we must redefine tool, redefine Man, or accept chimpanzees as humans.” There.
Consider the farmer who sprays his fields with insecticide to kill the bugs that are damaging his crops. He kills thousands of harmless insects as well, including some that actually do good, such as bees that pollinate the flowers and give us honey. Creatures that feed on insects, especially birds, also get sick and die. In the end, because the poisonous chemicals get widely distributed, humans may become sick, too.
I like to envision the whole world as a jigsaw puzzle... If you look at the whole picture, it is overwhelming and terrifying, but if you work on your little part of the jigsaw and know that people all over the world are working on their little bits, that’s what will give you hope.
Arguably, we are the most intellectual creatures that’s ever walked on planet Earth. So how come, then, that this so intellectual creature is destroying its only home?
Cruelty is a terrible thing. I believe it is the worst human sin.
He had instigated a detailed study of the limb bones and locomotor patterns of a number of modern antelopes; the functions of varying bone structures of their legs could then be ascertained. Then, from the structure of fossil antelope bones reconstructed their movements.
Here was a chimpanzee using a tool... That was object modification – the crude beginning of tool making.
Attacks by other chimpanzees are the second most frequent cause of death at Gombe, after disease. Through.