Chimpanzees have given me so much. The long hours spent with them in the forest have enriched my life beyond measure. What I have learned from them has shaped my understanding of human behavior, of our place in nature.
Any little thing that brings us back into communion with the natural world and the spiritual power that permeates all life will help us to move a little further along the path of human moral and spiritual evolution.
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.
Grub and Derek sitting on the veranda of the house in Dar es Salaam. Derek was a nationalized Tanzanian. He knew Swahili as well as he knew English. And he was liked and respected by almost all Tanzanians, including the Kigoma officials and my own field staff. He helped me to build up a new research center, where almost all the observations were made by the Tanzanian field staff. The.
When I was young, I knew that, somehow, I would go to Africa and live with animals. And I wanted to write books about them. I don’t think I spent too much time wondering exactly how I would do it. I just felt sure that the right opportunity would somehow come. I didn’t feel frustrated because I could not go a really long trip while Rusty was still alive. It would have seemed like a betrayal. And while I waited I went on learning.
Nature can win if we give her a chance.
And so began one of the most exciting periods of my life, the time of discovery.
Hope is a survival trait and without it we perish.
My role in life is to give people hope, because if you run out of hope, we may as well give up.
Just tell people stories, try and find out who they are, try and find something that links you with them.
Hope is often misunderstood. People tend to think that it is simply passive wishful thinking: I hope something will happen but I’m not going to do anything about it. This is indeed the opposite of real hope, which requires action and engagement.
Hope does not deny the evil, but is a response to it.
Children – and adults – who have a growth mindset are much more successful than those who have a fixed mindset about themselves and the world.
We are spiritual beings having a human experience.
Every day we make some impact on the planet. And the cumulative effect of millions of small ethical actions will truly make a difference.
Unfortunately, Doug, we have lost the long-term perspective, and we are suffering from an absurd and very unwise belief that there can be unlimited economic development on a planet of finite natural resources, focusing on short-term results or profits at the expense of long-term interests.
When making decisions most people ask, ‘Will it help me or my family now or the next shareholders’ meeting or my next election campaign?’ The hallmark of wisdom is asking, ‘What effects will the decision I make today have on future generations? On the health of the planet?
Unfortunately, the media devotes so much space to covering all of the bad, hateful things that are going on and not enough to reporting about all the goodness and kindness that’s out there.
We’re not really a very intelligent species when we destroy our home.
How do we get people to heed the dire warnings of the people on the ground who have been fighting this danger for so long? How do we get them to take action?
The naturalist,” Jane said, “looks for the wonder of nature – she listens to the voice of nature and learns from nature as she tries to understand it. Whereas a scientist is more focused on facts and the desire to quantify. For a scientist, the question is, ‘Why is this adaptive? How does it contribute to the survival of the species?