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" When I was two, a dragonfly flew near me. A man knocked it to the ground and trod on it. I remember crying because I'd caused the dragonfly to be killed. "
Jane Goodall
Two
Ground
Knocked
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" I like some animals more than some people, some people more than some animals. "
Jane Goodall
People
Like
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" It has actually been suggested that warfare may have been the principle evolutionary pressure that created the huge gap between the human brain and that of our closest living relatives, the anthropoid apes. Whole groups of hominids with inferior brains could not win wars and were therefore exterminated. "
Jane Goodall
Pressure
Human
Brain
" We have language and they do not. Chimps communicate by embracing, patting, looking - all these things. And they have lots of sounds. But they cannot sit and discuss. They cannot teach about things that are not present, as far as we know. "
Jane Goodall
Teach
Present
Looking
" Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don't believe is right. "
Jane Goodall
Believe
Listening
You
" I don't spend that much time being introspective, believe it or not. All I know is that I grew up not questioning God because that's how you are. God was there like the birds and the wind. "
Jane Goodall
Birds
God
Know
" Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans have been living for hundreds of thousands of years in their forest, living fantastic lives, never overpopulating, never destroying the forest. I would say that they have been in a way more successful than us as far as being in harmony with the environment. "
Jane Goodall
Forest
Successful
Living
" When I look back over my life it's almost as if there was a plan laid out for me - from the little girl who was so passionate about animals who longed to go to Africa and whose family couldn't afford to put her through college. Everyone laughed at my dreams. I was supposed to be a secretary in Bournemouth. "
Jane Goodall
Me
College
Dreams
" Chimps are very quick to have a sudden fight or aggressive episode, but they're equally as good at reconciliation. "
Jane Goodall
Equally
Aggressive
Quick
" My mother always taught us that if people don't agree with you, the important thing is to listen to them. But if you've listened to them carefully and you still think that you're right, then you must have the courage of your convictions. "
Jane Goodall
You
Us
Think
" I think we're still in a muddle with our language, because once you get words and a spoken language it gets harder to communicate. "
Jane Goodall
Because
Words
Think
" It was both fascinating and appalling to learn that chimpanzees were capable of hostile and territorial behavior that was not unlike certain forms of primitive human warfare. "
Jane Goodall
Warfare
Learn
Human
" In 1975, when my students were kidnapped by rebels, I was accused of hiding instead of trying to save them, and of not giving enough money for their ransom. I wasn't believed. "
Jane Goodall
Money
Enough
Trying
" I thought my life was mapped out. Research, living in the forest, teaching and writing. But in '86 I went to a conference and realised the chimpanzees were disappearing. I had worldwide recognition and a gift of communication. I had to use them. "
Jane Goodall
Gift
Life
Writing
" 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. "
Jane Goodall
Poverty
Living
Need
" As a small child in England, I had this dream of going to Africa. We didn't have any money and I was a girl, so everyone except my mother laughed at it. When I left school, there was no money for me to go to university, so I went to secretarial college and got a job. "
Jane Goodall
Mother
School
Money
" I did this book 'Harvest for Hope,' and I learned so much about food. And one thing I learned is that we have the guts not of a carnivore, but of an herbivore. Herbivore guts are very long because they have to get the last bit of nutrition out of leaves and things. "
Jane Goodall
Harvest
Food
Long
" But does that mean that war and violence are inevitable? I would argue not because we have also evolved this amazingly sophisticated intellect, and we are capable of controlling our innate behavior a lot of the time. "
Jane Goodall
Time
War
Violence
" I never wanted to be a scientist per se. I wanted to be a naturalist. "
Jane Goodall
Wanted
Never
Naturalist
" I got my love of animals from the Dr. Doolittle books and my love of Africa from the Tarzan novels. I remember my mum taking me to the first Tarzan film, which starred Johnny Weissmuller, and bursting into tears. It wasn't what I had imagined at all. "
Jane Goodall
Tears
Remember
Me
" What makes us human, I think, is an ability to ask questions, a consequence of our sophisticated spoken language. "
Jane Goodall
Think
Language
Human
" I miss the early days; I do. I was so lucky. I basically had it to myself, learning about these chimpanzees. Nobody knew anything about them. Discovering their different personalities, different life histories. I was lucky. "
Jane Goodall
Learning
Myself
Nobody
" It was because the chimps are so eye-catching, so like us and teach us so much that my work was recognised worldwide. "
Jane Goodall
Because
Us
Work
" I had been told from school onwards that the best definition of a human being was man the tool-maker - yet I had just watched a chimp tool-maker in action. I remember that day as vividly as if it was yesterday. "
Jane Goodall
Man
Day
Best
" I don't think that faith, whatever you're being faithful about, really can be scientifically explained. And I don't want to explain this whole life business through truth, science. There's so much mystery. There's so much awe. "
Jane Goodall
Truth
Business
Faith
" From my perspective, I absolutely believe in a greater spiritual power, far greater than I am, from which I have derived strength in moments of sadness or fear. That's what I believe, and it was very, very strong in the forest. "
Jane Goodall
Fear
Power
Perspective
" I was brought up to understand Darwin's theory of evolution. I spent hours and hours in the Natural History Museum in London looking at the descriptions of how different kinds of animals had evolved, looking at the sequence of fossil bones looking gradually more and more and more and more like the modern fossil. "
Jane Goodall
Looking
Animals
History
" Certainly the first true humans were unique by virtue of their large brains. It was because the human brain is so large when compared with that of a chimpanzee that paleontologists for years hunted for a half-ape, half-human skeleton that would provide a fossil link between the human and the ape. "
Jane Goodall
Skeleton
Virtue
Unique
" The part that always shocked me was the inter-community violence among the chimps: the patrols and the vicious attacks on strangers that lead to death. It's an unfortunate parallel to human behavior - they have a dark side just as we do. We have less excuse, because we can deliberate, so I believe only we are capable of true calculated evil. "
Jane Goodall
Dark
Violence
Me
" The tree I had in the garden as a child, my beech tree, I used to climb up there and spend hours. I took my homework up there, my books, I went up there if I was sad, and it just felt very good to be up there among the green leaves and the birds and the sky. "
Jane Goodall
Tree
Child
Good
" People say maybe we have a soul and chimpanzees don't. I feel that it's quite possible that if we have souls, chimpanzees have souls as well. "
Jane Goodall
People
Feel
Possible