“The least I can do is speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves”

Lasting change is a series of compromises. And compromise is all right, as long your values don’t change.

Only if we understand, will we care. Only if we care, will we help. Only if we help, shall all be saved.

And so began one of the most exciting periods of my life, the time of discovery.

People say to me so often, ‘Jane how can you be so peaceful when everywhere around you people want books signed, people are asking these questions and yet you seem peaceful,’ and I always answer that it is the peace of the forest that I carry inside.

Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.

That is our hope. Because if we all start listening and helping, then surely, together, we can make the world a better place for all living things. Can’t we?

The greatest danger to our future is apathy.

The least I can do is speak out for the hundreds of chimpanzees who, right now, sit hunched, miserable and without hope, staring out with dead eyes from their metal prisons. They cannot speak for themselves.

Only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, we will help. Only if we help, we shall be saved.

I never wanted to be a scientist per se. I wanted to be a naturalist.

We have so far to go to realize our human potential for compassion, altruism, and love.

We have the choice to use the gift of our life to make the world a better place–or not to bother

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.

Sometimes I [longed to be a chimp] I just wanted to know. what it felt like in the evening to be making a nest and what it felt like to be a female when a big male comes thundering in.

It actually doesn’t take much to be considered a difficult woman. That’s why there are so many of us.

People said, Jane, forget about this nonsense with Africa. Dream about things you can achieve.

I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Women and elephants never forget.

I don’t run with wolves, the wolves run with me.

When a man appreciates only eating and sleeping, what excellence has he over the reptiles?

God sleeps in the rock, dreams in the plant, stirs in the animal, and awakens in man.

Use a sweet tongue, courtesy, and gentleness, and thou mayest manage to guide an elephant by a hair.

That’s the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.

Man is, beyond dispute, the most excellent of created beings, and the vilest animal is a dog; but the sages agree that a grateful dog is better than an ungrateful man.