“Attacks by other chimpanzees are the second most frequent cause of death at Gombe, after disease.”

Someday we shall look back on this dark era of agriculture and shake our heads. How could we have ever believed that it was a good idea to grow our food with poisons?

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.

And always I have this feeling-which may not be true at all-that I am being used as a messenger.

You may not believe in evolution, and that’s all right. How we humans came to be the way we are is far less important that how we should act now to get out of the mess we have made for ourselves.

Only when our clever brain and our human heart work together in harmony can we achieve our true potential.

A sense of calm came over me. More and more often I found myself thinking, This is where I belong. This is what I came into this world to do.

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.

I think the best evenings are when we have messages, things that make us think, but we can also laugh and enjoy each other’s company.

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.

What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.

From the moment when, staring into the eyes of a chimpanzee, I saw a thinking, reasoning personality looking back.

Each one of us matters, has a role to play, and makes a difference. Each one of us must take responsibility for our own lives, and above all, show respect and love for living things around us, especially each other.

We can’t leave people in abject poverty, so we need to raise the standard of living for 80% of the world’s people, while bringing it down considerably for the 20% who are destroying our natural resources.

I like some animals more than some people, some people more than some animals.

Thousands of people who say they ‘love’ animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been utterly deprived of everything that could make their lives worth living and who endured the awful suffering and the terrors of the abattoirs

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.

Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal.

Man is a goal-seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals.

Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That’s the problem.

Four legs good, two legs bad.

Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.

Man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie.

Meow means woof in cat.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.