“Very few Westerners, I thought, could tolerate such a way of life- for it would mean having to forgo the luxuries which we had come to think of as necessities.”

It was a reward far beyond my greatest hopes.

I’d like to be remembered as someone who really helped people to have a little humility and realize that we are part of the animal kingdom, not separated from it.

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.

Nature can win if we give her a chance.

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

Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difficult, at least I have found it so – than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind.

All of life is a constant education.

Life is a full circle, widening until it joins the circle motions of the infinite.

Everything you gain in life will rot and fall apart, and all that will be left of you is what was in your heart.

Nothing has saddened me so much in life as the hardness of heart of educated people.

I’ve made mistakes in my life for sure.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

Insanity is coasting through life in a miserable existence when you have a caged lion locked inside and the key to release it.